Skill School Boys: Masculine Identity Formation Among White Boys in an Urban High School Vocational Autoshop Program

Abstract

Through interviews and observations, I explore how a group of white working-class boys who have family traditions in auto repair construct notions of masculinity in a public-vocational-school autoshop class in Buffalo, New York. Many of the students in this group say that they plan to open their own garages on graduation. Although there are many facets to the production of a sense of manhood, I focus on the ways in which young white males in a restructuring economy narrate a sense of self grounded in the area of work on a multiethnic shopfloor—a sphere which they ultimately coconstruct around notions of the racially deviant “other.” At present, there is not a lot of literature on identity formation processes among youth who are trained in school to become trades-people, particularly in relation to jobs that are typically coded “male.”