Constructions of the working-class ‘Other’ among urban, white, middle-class youth: ‘chavs’, subculture and the valuing of education

Abstract

In the context of a ‘death’ of class in popular and policy discourse, this paper argues that social class is still a major force at work in young people's lives, particularly in the context of schooling. We argue that young people's subcultural groups are classed, in the way in which they are constructed in discourse. Drawing on a data set of 68 interviews with white, middle-class young people in three different cities in England, we argue that class can be seen and felt in young people's constructions of the ‘chav’, where white, working-class young people's ways of being and doing in the context of schooling, stand in stark contrast to the normative middle-class subject, and become pathologized.