University and the Pursuit of a ‘Career’ for Working-Class Youth in Deindustrial Rochdale

Abstract

This article examines the way in which working-class young people in Rochdale, a former industrial town in the north-west of England, imagine their future transitions from college to work through qualitative research at Rochdale’s only A-Level college. It explores how students’ aspirations to attend university reflect their desire for a ‘career’ in the absence of alternative forms of work and as a symbolic marker of upward social mobility that is subsequently differentiated from other forms of work as a form of distinction, as a great deal of emphasis is placed on the moral and cultural worth of a ‘career’. In doing so, this article highlights how such perceptions are shaped by the material conditions faced by these young people, such as inequality, financial precarity, and relative poverty against the backdrop of deindustrialisation.