Narratives Of Upward Mobility Research Articles

The Ideology of Self-making and the White Working Class in Rebecca Harding Davis’ "Life in the Iron Mills"

Rebecca Harding Davis’ novella Life in the Iron Mills, published in 1861 in The Atlantic Monthly, is now considered a landmark of early American realism. This paper analyses the text’s depiction of the white working class and the ideological consequences of the myth of upward mobility and self-making, which are presented as an impossibility to Hugh Wolfe, the story’s main character. I will argue that Davis’ choice to offer a representation of the precarious lives of the workers of Northern industrial capitalism implies a criticism of the quintessentially American narrative of upward mobility, and a subsequent reflection on how foundational narratives operate in a society that is not homogeneous in terms of race or class. More specifically, I willmaintain that Life in the Iron Mills operates as a contestation to the myth of the self- made man, evinced by the comparison between Hugh Wolfe’s situation and that of the mill owners, who encourage his aspirations from an oblivious position of privilege. Lastly, Hugh’s tragic death will be taken as proof that the myth of self-making mystifies the actual social and economic dynamics of industrial capitalism.

Instrumental and Expressive Education

Nearly all young people in the United States aspire to a college degree, but many fail to complete college in a timely manner. Does this lack of attainment reflect abandoned college plans? I analyze mixed-methods data from a five-year study of 700 low-income mothers at two Louisiana community colleges. Hurricane Katrina displaced respondents and interrupted their college educations; respondents had to decide whether, how, and why to return to school. Few women earned degrees during the study, but survey data indicate that the rate of reenrollment and intentions to complete were high. Interview data reveal the cultural logics supporting continued plans for a return to college. Instrumentally, respondents believed education would result in better employment. Expressively, the moral status afforded students supported respondents’ narratives of upward mobility despite the difficulties they faced. The logic of human capital investment dominates policy and academic discussions of education’s value, but I find the symbolic meaning of a college degree also shapes plans for college return and college decision making long into adulthood. Plans to return persist long beyond the objective probability of earning a degree, and despite respondents’ difficult experiences, due to the expressive value college plans add to these young women’s lives.

From Redlining to Subprime Lending: How Neighborhood Narratives Mask Financial Distress in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

This article explores why and how homeowners in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, took out subprime mortgage loans, and the effect of these loans on individuals and their community. It analyzes real estate histories for properties on four street blocks in Bedford-Stuyvesant by linking public data for real estate transactions with homeowners' descriptions of those transactions, gathered through interviews. Subprime lending flourished in a neighborhood that historically was redlined by conventional lenders, and created and exacerbated poverty, as it stripped equity from individuals and the neighborhood. Many homeowners in the study managed to combat this process of becoming poor, however. Homeowners are averting foreclosure while making sacrifices that are not apparent from data for mortgage foreclosures, neighborhood appearance, or initial conversations with residents and community leaders. Longtime homeowners' personal and neighborhood narratives of upward mobility and stability remain sacrosanct and attached to homeownership, even when belied by financial realities. More recent homeowners are more likely to focus on safety concerns and economic uncertainty and to consider leaving. These findings suggest that efforts to address the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis and to prevent its recurrence should include homeowners who are not in foreclosure, but may nonetheless be struggling, and that solutions must consider homeowners' relationships with their communities.

On Children’s Literature and the (Im)Possibility of It Gets Better

It Gets Better and Children's Literature: An Overview In response to a devastating rash of reported queer youth suicides in fall of 2010, American writer Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller founded It Gets Better project, a website inviting adults to submit videos that offer messages of hope and encouragement to youth who may be struggling with their sexualities in difficult environments. (1) Fueled by contributions from public figures like Barack Obama and a host of celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, It Gets Better has garnered widespread attention and received over fifty thousand user-created video submissions that have been viewed more than fifty million times (What is). The It Gets Better book, co-edited by Savage and Miller, was released in March 2011 and appeared on New York Times bestseller list within weeks, and an It Gets Better documentary special profiling several queer teens was broadcast on MTV and Logo in February 2012. As It Get Betters popularity surged, however, critiques of project quickly surfaced. (2) Tavia Nyong'o notes that It Gets Better primarily hails an upwardly mobile class of white gay youth while excluding those for whom adulthood does not necessarily bring a reprieve from forms of anti-queer violence--particularly, Nyong'o writes, gender nonconforming and/or trans people. Sponsored by Gay-Straight Alliance of San Francisco, Make It Better project takes aim at passivity implicit n It Gets Better--the idea that simply enduring adolescence will result in improved social conditions--by offering practical tools for taking action against homophobia in schools and communities and on a national level. (3) In a Guardian article, Jasbir Puar expresses concern with narrowing of queerness' significance for both adults and youth: she argues that It Gets Better showcases a narrow class of successful adults and reinforces idea that queer youth are inevitably prone to suicide and bullying. For Puar, many adult It Gets Better contributors are invested in versions of family that stray little--if at all--from heteronormative and from narratives of upward mobility that [echo] now discredited 'pull yourself up from bootstraps' immigrant motto (In Wake). She concludes, thus ['it gets better'] might turn out to mean, you get more normal (In Wake). And in a frank Facebook post, queer activist Charlotte Cooper challenges idea that queer youth require adult stories to survive, writing, I wish there was some kind of an It Gets Better campaign in which fucked up queer teenagers give reassurance and advice to windy and pompous bourgie grown-up homos. There is a provocative tension between It Gets Betters stated purpose and way seems to circulate. On one hand, It Gets Better claims to be about queer youth: project directly addresses itself to this audience and ostensible crisis in which finds itself. (4) As Savage notes in his introduction to It Gets Better book, the point of project is to give despairing ]kids hope. The point is to let them know that things do get better, using examples of our own lives (6). On other hand, taking into account ever-growing array of responses to and critiques of It Gets Better, project appears to be more about adult hopes and anxieties surrounding how queer youth should be addressed than about queer youth themselves. As circulates through a variety of media, It Gets Better accumulates (mostly adult-authored) personal stories that echo project's primary, teleological narrative of development and resilience and an expansive body of (mostly adult-authored) critical interventions that interrogate pedagogical value and appropriateness of message that it gets better while gesturing, more broadly, to project's political failings. In other words, It Gets Better does not circulate according to ways that imagines its audience. …

The New Literature of the People: A Perspective on the Contemporary Chinese Literary Experience

Can Chinese literature become a global literature without losing its unique identity? An exploration of the new movement of “common literature”—or literature by or about the working class—may reveal one way it has become both: This literature offers an unwavering look at the gaping divide between China's urban elite (through the urban narrative of upward mobility) and rural poverty (with its own stock of narratives), yet it is precisely this willingness to examine the unchecked ramifications of globalization for average people that may enable Chinese literature to speak directly to the world in its most global sense.

Complex Subjectivities: Class, Ethnicity, and Race in Women's Narratives of Upward Mobility

This article engages the intersection of class, race, and ethnicity and the ways in which class marginality informs self and academic practice by drawing on research with ten female professors from the working class. Two phenomenological interviews were conducted with each participant as a primary source of data. Secondary sources included classroom visits and relevant documents. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a combination of grounded theory and narrative analysis. The author presents a narrative analysis of two stories told by participants to illustrate two distinct conceptualizations of class and ethnicity. Following this, she draws on grounded theory analysis to illustrate the ways in which class marginality informs academic practice. Implications of this work for educational institutions are discussed.

Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the neo-liberal subject

While the concept of class does not sit easily with a very changed labour market in which traditional markers of working-class masculinity have been eroded and many people would not define themselves in class terms, the differences and inequalities associated with class have certainly far from disappeared. This article aims to explore how we might think about the ways that 'class' enters the production of subjectivities in the present. In particular, the article explores the way in which narratives of upward mobility are lived as success and failure, hope and despair, for some young women entering the labour market in Britain at the turn of the millennium. The multiplicity and fracturing of past and present, belonging, not belonging, the dreams, aspirations and defences are explored in some detail.

Moralizing upward mobility: Investigating the myth of class mobility in working girl

Despite the booming U.S. economy, the economic lives of many Americans are not improving. Living the myth of the American Dream often requires individuals to negotiate their inability to transcend socioeconomic class. This study examines filmic narratives of upward mobility as one resource that people use to help them understand their socioeconomic situation. Using Working Girl as an exemplar, this study finds that upward mobility films prescribe a purification of motives for those attempting class transformation while denying the need for social action. Therefore, they separate a person's moral and characterological substance from the social transformation of class and bolster the idea that personal transformation is not hampered by class structures. This essay finds that narrative film has the potential to offer guidelines for negotiating the ideological gap in the myths of the American Dream and to recode social problems as individual problems with individual solutions.

Popular Culture and Critical Popularization

According to the popular intelligence, the fundamental fact about real life is that it has probably ceased to exist. Not for everyone, obviously. But certainly for white, middle-class Americans: the people who went to college, or else want their kids to go there; the ones who subscribe to Time or Newsweek, and who have become popularly acquainted therefore with the news that the life they thought they were living is becoming extinct. For increasing numbers of people, the narrative of upward mobility has turned out to be somebody else's fairy tale: for the disenfranchised auto worker who made it half way through his career only to see the final half disappear overseas; for the working mother who ends up living back with the parents because one person's wages will not support herself and her children; for the info-service trainee who will never see the salary curve that sustained four generations of American dreaming. All these people suddenly find themselves