Working-class Boys at the Margins: Ethnic Prejudice, Cultural Capital, and Gender

Abstract

In a population sample of 465 Norwegian adolescents (mean age 19.3 years), the relationship between ethnic prejudice and social class of origin, cultural capital, own education/work, and gender was investigated. The findings revealed that a unidimensional perspective on social class does not hold: least prejudice was found among adolescents from parts of the intermediate strata. High prejudice scores were found among the traditional elite, but top scores came from working-class adolescents. When indicators of parental cultural capital and parental party-political preferences were also introduced, more powerful factors in the family milieu were identified. It was of particular interest that while fathers' socio-economic position was most important, mothers' cultural capital had the greatest impact. Adolescents from areas with many immigrants, with whom they did not interact, had particularly high prejudice scores. Adolescents in theoretical education had scores denoting less prejudice than those who were part of the manual labour force, while there were no differences between those in vocational training and those who were working or were unemployed. Finally, gender was seen to have one of the largest effects: when controlling for all other factors, girls were much more tolerant than boys. The findings are discussed in relation to theories about new class differences, relative deprivation, cultural capital, youth cultures and the gender gap.