Counternarratives to Neoliberal Aspirations: White Working-Class Boys’ Practices of Value-Constitution in Formal Education

Abstract

This chapter considers how white working-class boys negotiate neoliberal learner identities through historically-constituted solidarist and communal values. Recent academic scholarship on social marginalisation in UK schooling has critiqued the rhetoric of ‘raising aspiration’ which exalts a definitive conception of neoliberal personhood—the capital-accruing, socially mobile, entrepreneurial self. This pervasive neoliberal logic structures normative schooling practices by codifying both ability and aspiration, and shaping working-class experiences of schooling. Set against a discourse of social mobility and entrepreneurialism which permeates schooling and the wider social imaginary of the UK, this chapter reflects on a study of white working-class boys in South London who construct counternarratives to neoliberal conceptions of personhood by constituting themselves as subjects of value in schools which devalue them and their aspirations.