Young Working-class Men Research Articles

My brother’s keeper: masculinities, social mobility and the role of familial care for working-class men

Research on social mobility continues to foreground the role of familial relationships. Studies of students who are first-in-family to attend university have often highlighted the intensity of familial obligations. Drawing on longitudinal research with upwardly mobile young men from working-class (and working-poor) backgrounds, this article presents three case studies focused on their relationship with their brothers who were on different, less upwardly mobile pathways. We understand gender to be discursively constructed and relationally negotiated through various interactions and the roles individuals come to embody. Research into caring masculinities foregrounds the various ways men are no longer disconnected from traditional feminine practices, particularly those concentrated on caring for others. We draw on the words of three upwardly working-class young men regarding how they perceived their relationship with their younger brothers, focusing specifically on the subjectivities they present as protector, supporter and familial caregiver.

Self-harming behaviours and social support among a sample of young men in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Abstract Background Psychiatric morbidity is substantially higher in Northern Ireland (NI) than in peer nations and men are disproportionately represented in suicide mortality data, particularly at early adulthood and middle age. To better scale interventions to reduce morbidity and mortality among young men, a mixed-methods study was conducted combining interviews and validated quantitative tools. Methods A non-random community sample of 30 working-class young men in Belfast aged 16-19 was recruited via organisations focused on job training, restorative justice, and youth work. Participants completed the Self-Harm Inventory and a semi-structured interview. Analyses were completed in NVivo and RStudio. Results The prevalence of self-harm was more than 8 times higher than for the general population of adolescents in NI, with 83.3% reporting ever engaging in self-harm. Only 2 of the 28 participants reported making a suicide attempt and most injuries were minor, suggesting nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) represented almost all injuries. Although the sample had a higher risk profile than the general population-with high levels of trauma, substance use, and socioeconomic deprivation-participants also endorsed strong social connections to friends, family, and community. While many expressed concerns about sharing their own emotional distress, almost all reported that disclosures are important to avert poor mental health and shared times when they or friends sought support. Conclusions Although there was a high prevalence of NSSI in the sample, the low prevalence of suicide attempts may be associated with the high levels of protective social connections reported by participants. Gender-based concerns regarding emotional support were common, but there was also strong endorsement for the importance of seeking support from trusted relationships. This suggests that there may be an appetite for male role models to provide education around the “bravery” of help-seeking. Key messages • Prevalence of nonsuicidal self-injury may be substantially more elevated in some populations of adolescent males. • Gender-based concerns continue to act as a barrier to young men sharing their emotional distress with trusted individuals.

Adaptation, change and reaffirmation: investigating the limits of young working-class men adapting to elite higher education institutions

ABSTRACT Historically, and in contemporary society, the pursuit of higher education remains an integral part of social mobility. The research presented in this article aligns with previous research capturing the complexities many students from non-traditional backgrounds face in transitioning to tertiary education. We focus on a small cohort of young men from working-class backgrounds who were able to access elite higher education institutions. Statistically, this population is the least likely to attend university or engage in post-secondary education and training. We explore how they adjust aspects of their identities to align with their perception of an elite university context. We see their journeys as a process of negotiation, of identifying with certain aspects associated with elite settings while rebuffing others often through reference of historically embedded aspects of working-class culture. To decipher these negotiations, we focus specifically on four key themes present in the data: a sense of exceptionalism; confronting the competitive culture; fitting in; and reaffirmations of working-class culture.

“I come from a poor family”: deciphering how working-class young men aspire to and experience their journeys in STEM higher education

AbstractWorking-class young men are often pathologised for their perceived lack of white-collar career aspirations. Historically, and in our present context, only a select minority of working-class males pursue higher education. Of those who attend, few choose to study STEM, which is often associated with academic rigour, competition and prestige. As a result, we know little about the motivations and experiences of working-class men pursuing STEM degrees. The aim of this paper is to decipher some of the complex interweaving of masculinities, social class and learner identities in STEM through focusing on three key themes from a longitudinal study focused on first-in-family males: (1) desire for financial stability and fulfilment; (2) internalising pressure; (3) struggles with social acclimatisation to university. The research provides some insight into how we can better support males from non-traditional backgrounds who aspire to pathways that contrast greatly with their socio-economic background.

Dressing masculinities: muted colours, aesthetic citizenship and nation-building in Tashkent, Uzbekistan

ABSTRACT This article explores the sartorial practices of Uzbek men across diverse urban contexts in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, highlighting the significance of muted colours as a discursive site for asserting aesthetic citizenship. Drawing on thirteen months of fieldwork, this article depicts how the dressed bodies of working-class young men are intertwined with notions of hegemonic masculinity and Uzbekness. It also analyses how nation-building narratives give rise to gendered sartorial norms and forms of self-discipline, bolstered by everyday dress regulations. I argue that working-class young men’s preference for muted colours, rooted in the Soviet aesthetic’s prioritization of practicality and simplicity, serves as a somatic means of de-beautification, which allows them both to distance themselves from ‘foreign’ fashion and consolidate masculine subjectivities. Thus, embodied sartorial practices become a gendered stance against supposedly zararli (harmful) foreign ideologies and an assertion of aesthetic citizenship against a background of an ongoing surge of gendered nationalism in Uzbekistan.

‘You don’t really want to hide it…’: exploring young working-class men’s mental health literacy

Australia’s National Men’s Health Strategy 2020–2030 considers men from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds to be a priority population and foregrounds the importance of initiatives focused on empowerment. This article seeks to explore young working-class men’s experiences with mental health in their years immediately following compulsory schooling. Drawing data from a larger study, we explore five young men who openly discussed their mental health. The analysis focuses on where they struggled, how they struggled and what self-care they enacted. Adopting a health literacy framework, we highlight two broad themes: closing yourself off and opening up. While historically working-class manhood has been centred around stoicism and a reluctance to admitting vulnerability, these case studies suggest that the identity work around masculinities and mental health may be experiencing change.

Amalgamated Masculinities: The Masculine Identity of Contemporary Marginalised Working-Class Young Men

Recent, UK-based studies have focused on the construction of working-class masculine identity and documented changes and softer displays among young men. This article contributes to this literature and is based on ethnographic research conducted in Wales, UK, and a sample consisting of the most marginalised working-class young men often associated with protest masculinity, homophobia and misogyny. The findings illustrate that although the participants disclose behaviours linked to protest masculinity, they also demonstrate softer masculine displays, including physical tactility, sensitivity, gender-egalitarian views and rejection of homophobia. Although the elements of protest masculinity discount the embodiment of pure inclusive masculinity, the changes in views and behaviours among the subgroup of working-class young men are significant and congruent with other research in this field. The combination of gender practices is conceptualised as ‘amalgamated masculinities’, a fusion of locally constructed protest masculine characteristics and softer masculine attributes adopted through external cultural influence.

Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines by Gregory A. Daddis

<i>Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines</i> by Gregory A. Daddis

Young Masculinities and Right-Wing Populism in Australia

This paper offers insights into the nexus of youth, masculinity, and right-wing populism in Australia. Here, we make reference to a wide body of international literature that suggests some affinity between disenfranchised (white) working-class young men and radical right ideas. Survey data were collected for a project on masculinity and the far right in Australia. A total of 203 young male informants worked primarily in ‘blue collar’ sectors of the Australian labour force. Some survey responses located them partly or potentially within the field of the populist right-wing, with many expressing anti-government sentiments and the discourse of white male victimhood. The majority were nostalgic for stereotypical masculinity. While right-wing populist movements across the world certainly differ, they often share a discourse promoting traditional gender roles.

From the reproduction of social class to the production of locality: Focusing on the narratives of young working class men in rural Japan

This paper reveals how young working-class men in Japan choose to work after high school instead of going to university. Through fieldwork and retrospective interviews, we interpreted young men's school experiences and career choices. We found that they did not conform to school norms but based their prospects on informal relationships outside school and the information available. This reality was lived and talked about as a process of acquiring the senses and social techniques necessary to live locally. These young peoples’ experiences and choices have traditionally been understood as a reproduction of social classes. In the context of their narratives, however, it is a process of becoming familiar with local sensibilities and social techniques, in other words, a process of producing locality. This raises new debates on class reproduction.

Remaking a “Failed” Masculinity: Working-Class Young Men, Breadwinning, and Morality in Contemporary Russia

AbstractMuch of the sociological work examining the changing fortunes of working-class young men has emphasized their newly precarious position as well as the “hollowed out” nature of their class subjectivities. By contrast, and echoing work on the adaptability of hegemonic forms of masculinity, this article points to the ongoing salience of working-class masculinities, drawing on longitudinal research with young men in Russia’s Ul’yanovsk region between 2004 and 2013. It examines how young men are able to shift from a position of marginality to one of a complicit, breadwinning masculinity by bringing to bear a variety of social, cultural, bodily, and institutional resources rooted in their class, gender, and ethnic location. This journey also reflects young men’s negotiation of dialogical, moral selves, central to which is their acquired ability to reflect upon different ways of being a man by appealing to wider moral currents within Russian society.

Possible Selves in a Transforming Economy: Upwardly Mobile Working-Class Masculinities, Service Work and Negotiated Aspirations in Australia

The relationship between working-class masculinities and industrial (and post-industrial) employment has been of sustained interest to sociologists for the last 40 years. This article draws on recent research examining the experiences of upwardly mobile working-class young men navigating casual employment within an urban part of Australia adapting to post-industrialisation. In presenting three longitudinal case studies, the theoretical frameworks of selfhood, possible selves and imagined futures are used to understand how service sector employment contributes to the development of aspirations during the transition beyond compulsory schooling. The focus is on how service employment informed the young men’s lives, aspirations and their sense of self. An argument is presented which articulates how, to varying extents, this service work is where the participants both accrue value and become valued.

GENDER REGIMES OF RUSSIAN WORKING-CLASS FAMILIES

Purpose of the study: The study is aimed to examine working-class everyday culture gender regimes in modern Russia. The research is focused on intergenerational transmission of gender-normative patterns, macro-policy of power and domination in working-class families, forms of their discursive production and legitimation.&#x0D; Methodology: The empirical base is represented by 30 biographical interviews with the informants aged from 21 to 33, living in Tyumen city and working in the field of industry, technical maintenance, and customer service. Reflexive analysis based on the categorical field of phenomenology and social constructionism, as well as data coding procedures, has been used as the main research tool.&#x0D; Main Findings: It was found that the normative pattern of a male breadwinner, having power in a family-based on control over economic resources, still dominates among young working-class men and actively supported by the majority of young women. The financial and status dominance of a man does not cause doubts in his leadership but when a woman plays a crucial role in providing for the family, informants tend to talk about “equality” in the family.&#x0D; Applications of this study: The results of the study can be used in the teaching of sociology, gender studies, and cultural studies; it can also be applied by local policymakers while developing social policy programs targeted on the regarded social group.&#x0D; Novelty/Originality of this study: In the current research we have examined a particular social group at the intersection of three stratification features: social class, gender, and age. The approach of “agency within the structure” provides an opportunity to carry out a deep sociological analysis of the relations between the macro-social and personal aspects of the gender regimes framing.

Book Review: Young Working-Class Men in Transition (Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities)

Book Review: Young Working-Class Men in Transition (Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities)

Steven Roberts: Young Working-Class Men in Transition

Steven Roberts: Young Working-Class Men in Transition

Book Review: Steven Roberts, Young Working-class Men in Transition

Book Review: Steven Roberts, <i>Young Working-class Men in Transition</i>

Book Review: Working-Class Young Men in Transition

Book Review: Working-Class Young Men in Transition

Looking for work: youth, masculine disadvantage and precarious employment in post-millennium England

ABSTRACT The changing nature of youth (under)employment in England since the start of the new millennium is explored through a comparative analysis of three cohorts of young working class men searching for work in English towns between 2001 and 2017. Labour market changes, including the rise of precarious work and forms of self-employment, as well as increasing inequality and cuts in youth services since the financial crisis in 2008, are having a serious impact on the least qualified young men. However, changes in the nature of employment at the bottom end of the service suggest the re-evaluation of earlier claims about the relative disadvantage of (some) young men.

Engaging young working class men in the delivery of sex and relationships education

ABSTRACTDespite a substantial body of research on young people’s wishes about the content and delivery of sex and relationships education (SRE), studies still indicate dissatisfaction with the way lessons are provided. This discussion takes place in a public health context where young people’s sexual activity is viewed negatively as a risk to health, and advice focusses on the need to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. This focus on risk clashes with cultural representations of sexuality, and particularly male sexuality, which focus on pleasure and risk taking. In this paper, we present insights from workshops provided by a local charity to boys aged 14–15 in a school in one of the most deprived areas in Edinburgh, Scotland. We held four focus groups with a total of 20 boys and interviewed the workshop providers and the school guidance teacher. The boys valued having men from outside school talking to them about sex and relationships in ways that made them feel respected. They were keen to learn more about relationships, highlighting the need to focus on how SRE is delivered to young working class men.

Book Review: Steven Roberts, Young Working-Class Men in Transition

Book Review: Steven Roberts, <i>Young Working-Class Men in Transition</i>