Privileged Backgrounds Research Articles

‘An ambitious club on a small scale’: the rise of the Royal Isle of Wight Golf Club 1882–1914

ABSTRACTIn this article, the notable, but forgotten, history of the Royal Isle of Wight Golf Club (RIWGC), founded in 1882, is used to examine the cultural and social shifts that enabled the development of the sport's popularity across late Victorian and Edwardian society in Britain. The club can justifiably be described as notable because for a brief period this small island club was at the centre of developments which helped shape golf during this era and framed its development in the twentieth century. Two archetypally entrepreneurial Victorian gentlemen, Captain Jack Eaton and Charles John Jacobs, were central to the club's success and their endeavours underpinned the club's illustrious status. This paper examines newspaper records, periodicals and local archives to explain how the RIWGC originated and then prospered in tandem with the development of the Isle of Wight as an upmarket holiday destination. Moreover the article shows how the club provided access for both sexes of the English upper middle class to a sport and an environment that delivered the cultural benefits and the social kudos which could be derived from association with a golf club, and particularly one that was one of a select group of ‘Royal’ golf clubs. However, research also demonstrates that the club provided an environment where enterprising and talented men from less privileged backgrounds could seize the opportunity to become famous on the national and even the international stage. Finally it will demonstrate that the RIWGC had a significant role in codifying the rules of golf in the 1880s when the R&A appeared hesitant to take the lead.

Pedagogy of non-domination: Neo-republican political theory and critical education

The neo-republican political philosophy (sometimes referred to as civic republicanism) advances the idea of freedom as non-domination, in an attempt to provide democracy with a solid normative foundation upon which concrete principles and institutions can be erected so as to make freedom a reality. However, attempts to develop a republican educational theory are still hesitant, and fail to take the republican radical conception of freedom to its full conclusions. This article suggests that dialogue between neo-republicanism and critical pedagogy can be mutually productive. In the first part of the article we present the neo-republican theory, and contrast it with traditional liberalism. In the second we focus on existing neo-republican theories of education, and claim that they do not take the republican presuppositions to their necessary conclusion, namely to an educational theory fully committed to the idea of freedom as non-domination. A republican educational theory, we argue, must take into consideration not only the freedom students will have in the future, but also their freedom in the present: it should think of school as a small-scale republic, which prepares its inhabitants to be future citizens of the state while at the same time treating them as free citizens in their own right. In the third part we use insights taken from critical pedagogy to chart the direction republican education must take by applying three key republican notions—democratic control, civic contestation, and trust. In the fourth and last part we outline four aspects in which neo-republicanism can shed new light on contemporary debates in critical pedagogy: the connection between democracy and justice, the multiplicity of forms of domination, critical education within schools, and work with students from relatively privileged backgrounds.

Floating Downstream? Parental Support and Future Expectations of Young People from Less Privileged Backgrounds

Here we present an analysis of young people’s orientations to the future in the context of intergenerational relations. We draw on qualitative interviews to examine how young people from less privileged backgrounds use their family as an anchor when mapping the landscape of possible futures. Further, we use extensive quantitative material from structured surveys to provide contextual information on how young people’s imagined futures are shaped by the earlier generation. The study shows that the ingredients with which young people concoct their futures are in many ways grounded in their families’ attempts to provide the most favourable support they can manage within the structural constraints and on the basis of the affordances that are available to them, but largely regardless of their class background. Our analysis also emphasises that there is a wide range of trajectories between academic careers conventionally understood as ‘successful’ and the careers resulting in ‘social exclusion’.

Our Kids - On the Book of R. D. Putnam

In Our Kids Robert D. Putnam presents a series of portraits of the contrasting lives of young Americans from more and less privileged backgrounds, putting considerable emphasis on the issues of marriage, families and parenting, school system and the matters of educational segregation, neighborhood separation and delinquency, thereby he illustrates the constantly growing social inequalities between rich and poor kids. By recalling his own adolescence, exploring and interviewing his high school classmates, and considering opportunities of their and other’s social advancement, Putnam and his colleagues compare the social and economic conditions and the opportunity of upward mobility of poor kids in the Gilded Ages of the United States with the contemporary socioeconomic circumstances and future prospects.

Interpersonal Blame and Perceptions of Choice

Blame judgments may be impacted by choice at both a situational level (through vignette manipulation) and an individual level (assessments of attitudes). College students, 264 women and 73 men, from a central Texas university read one of six vignettes describing a target individual, a freshman student having academic problems, and completed free will and agency attitude items. Vignettes manipulated choice wording (made a choice, no choice, or neutral) and target’s background (inner city or advantaged). Greater blame was associated with a privileged background and with a choice mindset, but not with individual-level assessments for free will and agency. Perhaps using choice wording and describing a wealthier background leads to the perception that target individuals “could have done otherwise,” resulting in more blame.

Paradox and privilege: A 55-year follow-up of the mortality of Yale College graduates

ObjectiveTwo hypotheses were tested: 1. People from privileged backgrounds had better survival than those from less privileged backgrounds. 2. The advantages of privilege were vitiated by fraternity membership. MethodsA 55-year retrospective cohort study of survival since 1960 of 945 graduates of Yale College followed to 2015. ResultsThe survival of graduates of private secondary schools (the privileged group) did not differ from that of public school graduates. However, graduates of private secondary schools who had not joined a fraternity in college had significantly better survival than private school graduates who had joined fraternities and than public school graduates, whether fraternity members or not. ConclusionsThe benefits of a privileged background in respect of survival were undermined by fraternity membership. It is suggested that both self-selection and substance mis-use may have contributed to the survival difference.

Does Poor Quality Schooling and/or Teacher Quality Hurt Black South African Students Enrolling for a Degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal?

Wealthy schools appoint better qualified teachers, less wealthy schools under qualified teachers. Added to this mix is a powerful teacher’s union whose policies attempt to entrench the job security of teachers in the less wealthy schools irrespective of whether they can teach their subjects or not. Can one isolate these effects from that of other socio-demographic factors that may also be affecting the performance of students when they enrol for a degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)? An outcome variable that subtracts the number of courses that have been failed from the number of courses that have been passed, dividing this by the total number of years that they have spent studying for a particular degree will be used as a response variable for this paper.ObjectivesThe system of secondary education in South Africa is highly polarized. On the one hand, we have a group of mainly Black African students, forming about 80% of the total student population, that come from a vastly under-resourced rural or township based community. On the other hand, we have a group of predominantly White and Indian students who are able to attend a far better resourced set of private schools. Added to this mix, we have 240,000 of South Africa’s total number of 390,000 primary and secondary school teachers who belong to a powerful teacher’s union which enjoys a strong political alliance with the ruling party in South Africa. With most of their union members teaching in the less wealthy schools in South Africa, `school background’ now includes a politically motivated component that focuses on teacher self–interest rather than the education of the child. What sort of effect does school background have on the performance of students when they enter an institution of higher learning? More importantly, can one isolate the effect of school background from that of other possibly confounding factors such as gender, financial aid and the receipt of some form of residence based accommodation that will also impact on their performance while at university?MethodA total of 6,183 students enrolling for a degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) over the period 2008 to 2012 were used a dataset for this study. Permission to use this dataset was given by the Teaching and Learning Office at UKZN. The database that was used for this study was obtained from the Division of Management Information (DMI) office at UKZN. The percentage based marks that students have managed to record for Mathematics, English, Biology and Accounting in their school leaving exams together with some other important but observable socio-economic factors were included in a regression model to determine how students will perform at UKZN. Socio-economic variables relating to gender, race and whether they have receivd some form of financial aid or residence based accommodation while studying at university were also included as predictor variables in our regression based model structure.Results and ConclusionsAn interaction effect associated with being a Black African student who has been privileged enough to attend a quintile five school was found to be significant. A main effect associated with being able to attend a more privileged quintile 5 school however was found to be nonsignificant even after an adjustment has been made for gender, race, the receipt of some form of financial aid and residence based accommodation. Given that UKZN already has a number of bridging programs in place that target students who have come from a less privileged background, for university based policymakers, this result may help to justify the targeted selection of Black African students from the less privileged schools that is taking place. Because some of the disparity in matric performance that we are observing may also be associated with teacher competency and the protective influence of a powerful teacher’s union, this paper may also help to highlight some of the economic costs related with having under-prepared students. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”–United Negro College Fund.

The burden of acting wise: sanctioned success and ambivalence about hard work at an elite school in the Netherlands

Sam and his classmates despise ‘nerds’: they say working hard in school makes a student unpopular, and that they purposefully do only the minimum to pass. Research suggests that such ‘oppositional’ attitudes are prevalent among working class students and/or ethnoracial minorities. Like most of his classmates, however, Sam is white, hails from a privileged background, and attends a selective school in the Netherlands. Deeply ambivalent about working hard and ‘acting wise’, Sam and the others constituting his adolescent society are thoroughly caught up in peer dynamics which sanction success and promote mediocrity. We link these anti-school peer dynamics to the institutional configuration of education in the Netherlands, characterized by rigid tracking at the end of primary school and non-selective universities: state structures and policies contribute to these privileged students’ rationale for ‘taking it easy’ and doing poorly in school.

Marrying Up by Marrying Down: Status Exchange between Social Origin and Education in the United States.

Intermarriage plays a key role in stratification systems. Spousal resemblance reinforces social boundaries within and across generations, and the rules of intermarriage govern the ways that social mobility may occur. We examine intermarriage across social origin and education boundaries in the United States using data from the 1968–2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Our evidence points to a pattern of status exchange—that is, persons with high education from modest backgrounds tend to marry those with lower education from more privileged backgrounds. Our study contributes to an active methodological debate by pinpointing the conditions under which the results pivot from evidence against exchange to evidence for exchange and advances theory by showing that the rules of exchange are more consistent with the notion of diminishing marginal utility than the more general theory of compensating differentials.

Shamus Rahman Kahn: Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School

In Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Rahman Kahn provides empirical research, discussion, interviews and commentary on the raising and educating of the children of the ‘‘new privileged.’’ Standardized testing, need-based financial aid, affirmative action and generally a more open attitude toward inclusivity and diversity has moved our society far away from the inequality in education that existed up to the late 20th Century. For example, the Kahn cites research that shows that only 0.8 % of the students at elite colleges were black in 1951, whereas today, more than 8 % of the students at Ivy League are black. In this new society where children of the aristocrats are no longer entitled to things but must work to retain their status, some adolescents of the aristocrats struggle to find a place, while some have acclimated to and thrive in this new environment. Kahn displays his research in the context of St. Paul’s School, an elite boarding school in New Hampshire where Kahn attended as a student and also returned later as a teacher and a researcher. In Chapter 1, Kahn sets the framework for the rest of the book. In order to understand the different world children of the elite live in, Kahn urges us to understand the notion of the ‘‘new privileged.’’ He compares his experiences as a minority student at St. Paul’s School decades ago to that of Chase Abbott, a wealthy student attending the school today whose last name is used to name one of the buildings on campus. As a racial minority, Kahn was sequestered in the exclusive environment within St. Paul’s when he was a student. In comparison, today it is Chase who is sequestered within St. Paul’s. He explains this phenomenon through his notion of the ‘‘new privileged.’’ The elite status in today’s society can no longer be inherited by aristocracy; it can only be obtained by meritocracy. In 1929, for example, the majority of income (70 %) of the richest 0.01 % came from capital, while only 10 % came from employment. But today, only 17 % of income of the same group comes from capital, while 52 % comes from employment. Kahn argues that elite status can no longer be passed down from father to son but the son must earn elite status through merit. Kahn also argues that students like Chase isolate themselves at St. Paul’s and demand their status as if it were their birthright. The result is that students like Chase have a difficult time adjusting to St. Paul’s and they are often the topic of discussion among faculty members who argue that there is no longer a place for students like Chase at St. Paul’s. In contrast, Kahn compares Chase to another student, Peter, who embodies the ‘‘new privileged.’’ Like Chase, Peter comes from the same privileged background. His parents attended Harvard, he has a long legacy at St. Paul’s, and he knew a lot of the students at St. Paul’s before coming to school. However, what is different about Peter is that Chase understood his position at St. Paul’s as his birthright while Peter understood it as fruit of his hard work, combined with his privileged background. Furthermore, Peter embraces the racial minorities and the differences that exist at St. Paul’s. In later chapters Kahn explains how the ‘‘new privileged’’ like Peter are able to reproduce elite status. In Chapter 2, entitled ‘‘Finding One’s Place,’’ Kahn discusses the work and effort that must be put in, in order to acclimate to the new world of the privileged. Even the title of the chapter suggests that attending an elite school like St. Paul’s requires students to actively seek and earn a & E. Daniel Kim eundkim@indiana.edu

La amistad cívica en Aristóteles: concordia y fraternidad

El artículo muestra la importancia de la amistad en el contexto de la filosofía política aristotélica. Esta importancia se verifica en su peso específico en comparación con la justicia, puesto que Aristóteles mismo sostiene que la amistad cívica es incluso un objetivo superior al de la búsqueda de la justicia. En concreto, el artículo se centra en la función de la concordia, como tipo especial de amistad cívica, en términos de conservación de la unidad y estabilidad de la polis. Para captar su significación, se plantea el papel de la concordia como complemento a la condición política del ser humano. La concordia es necesaria a la luz de la tendencia a la lucha entre las partes de la ciudad, entre el demos y los oligarcas. Puesto que esta lucha pone en peligro la continuidad de la polis, la concordia entre ciudadanos se convierte en un antecedente privilegiado del principio de fraternidad republicana, el cual todavía no ha gozado de una atención suficiente en el campo de la historia de la filosofía política.

Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations by Tami Williams

Williams, Tami. Germaine Dulac: A Cinema of Sensations. Chicago: UP of Illinois, 2014. ISBN 978-0-252-03847-1. Pp. 314. $28. Standard histories of French filmmaking long associated Germaine Dulac (1882– 1942) with The Seashell and the Clergyman (1927), the visual dreamscape scripted by Antonin Artaud hailed as the first surrealist film, and with the associative, symbolfueled Smiling Madame Beudet (1923).While scholars Sandy Flitterman-Lewis andAlain and Odette Virmaux made strides in rehabilitating Dulac, who was arguably the Third Republic’s most important woman filmmaker alongside Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), their partial portrayals fell far short of the extraordinary archival reconstruction performed here. Using documents made public in 1996 and tracking down prints of all extant features and shorts Dulac shot between 1916 and 1936, Williams delivers primary scholarship of the highest order. Her jargon-free prose blends biographical narrative, institutional histories of Belle Époque feminism and syndicalism, economic and industrial considerations, as well as close analyses of films that survived and reconstructions of those that did not.Dulac emerges as a socially committed journalistcritic , an astute film theoretician, and a subversive yet diplomatic creator who braved considerable prejudice as a homosexual and as a woman.Williams notes the privileged background of Dulac (born Schneider, her family headed the metallurgy concern at Le Creusot) and the nontraditional marital arrangement she enjoyed with Catholic freethinker Albert Dulac even as she pursued liaisons with actress Stacia Napierkowska and onetime production associate Irène Hillel-Erlanger.Attracted in equal measure as a theater-goer and dramatist to Lugné-Poë’s symbolism and to Antoine’s realism (41), Dulac looked primarily to modern dance (Fuller, Duncan) and post-romantic music (Debussy) to conceive a“pure”cinema predicated on gesture, movement, and rhythm. For all its abstraction and self-reflexivity, this view of cinema remained bound to ordinary social life, particularly, argues Williams, to those gender norms that screenplays from La cigarette (1919) to La princesse Mandane (1928) consistently undermine. A pioneer in the interwar ciné-club movement and international documentary circuit (she shepherded early projects by Jean Vigo and Jean Painlevé), Dulac co-founded, in 1936, the storied Cinémathèque française.Williams reappraises the maligned newsreel years with Gaumont and France-Actualités, underscoring the several innovations Dulac brought to the musical short (disques illustrés); to sports coverage (dailies for Le tour de France [1932] saw national distribution, reducing the temporal gap between the event and its transmission); and to the compilation film (Le cinéma au service de l’histoire,1935).Her equivocalVichy-era shorts lauding Philippe Pétain,arguesWilliams, show a surprisingly conservative turn toward political accommodation while reflecting the national consensus circa 1940–41. At times, the book’s monographic focus hides from view other players of note: readers unfamiliar with interwar film comment might wonder whether, Dziga Vertov aside, anyone in the 1920s save Dulac thought to write about gesture, movement, and rhythm in film. A Cinema of Sensations is nonetheless an impressive achievement. It establishes Dulac as no less a crucial architect of France’s 244 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 245 flourishing yet economically-embattled cinema culture than Henri Langlois, Louis Delluc, or André Bazin. Retrospectively, in light of this groundbreaking, generously documented study, it is perhaps their achievements that should be compared to hers. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger Albanese, Ralph. Racine à l’école républicaine. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013. ISBN 9782 -343-01839-3. Pp. 285. 29 a. Albanese explores the same question that he posed in earlier monographs on Molière, La Fontaine, and Corneille: how did the French educational system after the Revolution appropriate and nationalize a seventeenth-century writer, in this case Racine? Racine would appear to be the most difficult classical author to assimilate into “l’école républicaine,” given the tragedian’s association with monarchist and religious values, precisely the opposite of what a democratic and secular school system should inculcate.Yet Albanese shows a remarkable plasticity to Racine’s works, which can serve a variety of moral purposes depending on the particular value that the pedagogue wishes to highlight—e.g., maternal virtue (Andromaque), the...

College quality and the positive selection hypothesis: The ‘second filter’ on family background in high-paid jobs

This paper investigates the heterogeneous returns to college quality across the wage distribution, using Norwegian administrative data. An ongoing debate in the literature is whether students who are most likely to attend a high-quality college benefit the most from college quality (the positive selection hypothesis) or whether students who are least likely to attend a high-quality college benefit the most (the negative selection hypothesis). The findings in this paper support the predictions in the positive selection hypothesis, especially at the top of the wage distribution. But the findings suggest that this pattern of positive selection is not caused by students self-selecting into colleges based on expected gain. Instead, the findings suggest that a second filter on family background exists. Students from privileged background are not only more likely to attend a high-quality college (the first filter), but are also more likely to convert their high-quality college education into success at the labor market (the second filter).

Citizenship education in Canada: ‘Democratic’ engagement with differences, conflicts and equity issues?

Abstract Recent research on multi-faceted citizenship education policy and practice in Canada illustrates five enduring themes of interest to educators around the world. First, citizenship education policy mandates reveal diverse goals for ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizen engagement, critical and inclusive awareness, and skills. Students from different social identity and status locations tend to have unequal citizenship learning experiences, and school education is often disconnected from their lived experiences and concerns. Second, intersecting questions of national and ethno-cultural identity and social justice are prominent in Canadian curricular rhetoric, although achievement of inter-group equity, mutual understanding and justice is elusive. Third, although transnational issues and perspectives are increasingly included, some Canadian curricula seem to reinforce ignorance and stereotypes about other nations and peoples and about the causes of global problems such as war. Much of the global citizenship education activity in Canadian schools seems to be focused on co-curricular activities, often emphasizing charity fundraising, leaving the causes of human misery largely uninterrogated. Fourth, curriculum policy discourse in civics, social sciences, language and media literacy emphasizes the importance of student-centred pedagogy for development of critical thinking skills, while typical classroom practice seems often to retain teacher-centred transmission approaches. Last, implicit citizenship education is embedded in day-to-day school-related activities and relationships: patterns of discipline and conflict management, community service activities, and student voice and leadership roles. Thus active, engaged citizenship, attentive to multicultural diversity, is a prominent goal in recent Canadian citizenship education policy and programming – yet in practice, Canadian students (especially those from less privileged backgrounds) have few opportunities to practice democratically relevant citizenship learning in school.

Careers on the Move: International Doctoral Students at an Elite British University

AbstractInternational student mobility, especially at doctoral level, is a largely under‐researched component of international migration. This is in stark contrast with the case of credit mobility where much research has been undertaken on Erasmus students. The aim of this paper is to remedy the situation by focusing on international doctoral students who chose to study at an elite higher education institution in the UK. By analysing the role of – local, national and international – schemes of funding in shaping individual mobility decisions, the author argues against the portrayal of international students as ‘rational decision makers’ in favour of a more contextualised approach to mapping the graduate student migratory phenomenon. By contrasting the ‘entry channels’ of students with their future plans – in terms of the nature of future career and geographic location – the author challenges the assumption that internationally mobile students are coming with the intention of settling down in their study destination. The study cannot uphold the view of international students as a ‘migratory elite’ either; although some postgraduate students are indeed from more privileged backgrounds, many individuals undertake international doctoral mobility with the explicit aim of capital accumulation. Last but not least, the paper strongly argues for abandoning the term ‘spontaneous mobility’ in student mobility research because a significant proportion of degree mobility does not occur spontaneously but is a result of organised schemes of funding. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exploring tool innovation: A comparison of Western and Bushman children

A capacity for constructing new tools, or using old tools in new ways, to solve novel problems is a core feature of what it means to be human. Yet current evidence suggests that young children are surprisingly poor at innovating tools. However, all studies of tool innovation to date have been conducted with children from comparatively privileged Western backgrounds. This raises questions as to whether or not previously documented tool innovation failure is culturally and economically specific. In the current study, thus, we explored the innovation capacities of children from Westernized urban backgrounds and from remote communities of South African Bushmen. Consistent with past research, we found tool innovation to occur at extremely low rates and that cultural background had no bearing on this. The current study is the first to empirically test tool innovation in children from non-Western backgrounds, with our data being consistent with the view that despite its key role in human evolution, a capacity for innovation in tool making remains remarkably undeveloped during early childhood.

Whose choice? Young people, career choices and reflexivity re-examined

Young people making future career choices are doing so in an environment that often highlights the benefits supposedly wrought by individualisation and reflexive choice. It is argued that those who demonstrate reflexivity in their decision-making would have an advantage in the negotiation of future risks. The authors of this article agree with theorists who note that career choices are still strongly influenced by a person’s location in the class structure. However, unlike some writers who suggest youth from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to evaluate risk and demonstrate reflexivity, the authors suggest the opposite. Interviews were conducted with young people aged 16–17 who are participating in an ongoing project designed to follow a cohort of young Australians from adolescence into later life. Our findings suggest that while a more privileged location may afford young people security from many potential risks and problems, this may in fact encourage a non-reflexive perspective and they may choose careers based on social norms rather than ability. Instead, we argue that it is young people from less privileged backgrounds who tend to demonstrate reflexivity in their career planning.

‘Why are you applying there?’: ‘race’, class and the construction of higher education ‘choice’ in the United Kingdom

Despite entering higher education in good numbers, candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups are concentrated in less prestigious institutions. A similar pattern is evident in candidates’ applications, raising important questions about the role of ‘self-exclusion’. Statistical analysis confirms that candidates from some minority ethnic groups tend to target lower-ranking institutions, but these differences are almost entirely explained by other variables, particularly academic attainment, type of school attended, number of A-levels taken and subject mix. It follows that some minority ethnic groups appear to be indirectly disadvantaged by patterns of schooling that do not prepare candidates for elite higher education. Similar processes are evident in relation to social class, although candidates from less privileged family backgrounds remain less likely to target high-status institutions even when other variables are taken into account.

Persisting Effects of Internet Skills on Online Participation

Millions of people contribute to online content daily, allowing them to share their ideas and influence public conversations. Some have attached much enthusiasm and hope to such activities as they may result in a variety of benefits, including cultural empowerment, engagement with the political process, and collective knowledge production. While these considerations cast the Internet as a potentially equalizing platform, research has shown that certain groups of people are more likely to participate in such online activities than others. All existing research on this topic has relied on cross-sectional data, making it impossible to make causal arguments about what results in more or less online engagement. That is, while research has found, for example, that Internet skills are related to online participation, the cross-sectional nature of the data makes it difficult for scholars to disentangle the causal effect between the two variables, that is, whether higher skills result in more participation or whether more participation leads to higher skills, or both. In this paper, we draw on a unique panel survey data set that includes data about the same 547 young adults from 2009 and 2012 to address these questions. We consider how demographic factors, socioeconomic status as well as various Internet experiences such as veteran status, frequency of use, autonomy of use, self-efficacy and Internet skills may influence people’s participation online, from editing Wikipedia to taking part in online forum discussions, posting reviews and voting on others’ content. We find that far from being universal, only a small portion of respondents have ever participated in several of these types of online activities, and some have never engaged in any of them. Despite the study’s focus on young adults who have grown up with digital media, not only is participation not universal, there are systematic differences in the types of people who are more or less likely to participate. We show that young adults with higher levels of Web-use skills are more likely to engage in various online production activities than their less-skilled counterparts. In particular, those from more privileged backgrounds, i.e., whose parents have higher levels of education, are more likely to contribute their voices to online conversations. This paper makes a special contribution to the growing literature on Internet skills by examining how three different measures of this concept relate to online engagement. We look at a universal Internet skills measure, we include a measure of Internet self-efficacy, and we test the effect of a more nuanced measure of Web-use skills. We find that self-efficacy and skill have independent effects on the outcome of online engagement suggesting that research on people’s online know-how should not collapse these conceptually different variables. The paper ends with the policy implications of the findings for achieving a universally empowered Internet citizenry. Findings suggest that simply having grown up with digital media does not result in either universal know-how about the Internet nor universal online engagement suggesting that interventions are important to make sure that people from all backgrounds have the necessary skills to take advantage of all that the Internet has to offer.

Privileged Mexican migrants in Europe: Distinctions and cosmopolitanism on social networking sites

Abstract This article examines the ways in which classed distinctions are related to the construction of increasingly cosmopolitan identities on Social Networking Sites (SNSs) amongst Mexican migrants from relatively privileged backgrounds living in Europe. It centres on how user demographics shape many of the concerns and outcomes pertaining to the use of SNSs. It considers the implications of the fact that SNSs are predominantly used by a demographic considered as non-marginalized, mobile and as possessing relatively privileged economic, cultural and social backgrounds. It analyses the ways in which online identities are constructed on SNS profiles using multimedia content to represent specific lifestyles and cultural practices that are used to make distinctions amongst participants, and are related to social, cultural and economic capital. A critical analysis is presented as to how users represent cosmopolitan identities online through the display of tastes and lifestyles in SNS content and into how these representations relate to users’ privileged positions in Mexican society. Bourdieu’s concept of distinction is used to emphasize the utility of considering different forms of capital in analysing the use of SNSs and profile content generated by a specific demographic. This article demonstrates how the analysis of SNS use may contribute towards an understanding of how classed distinctions are made based on this use and of how users negotiate the posting of profile content according to these distinctions and manage (select, edit and share) their representations.