The Moral Boundary Drawing of Class: Social Inequality and Young Precarious Workers in Poland and Germany

Abstract

This article explores the relational and moral aspects of the perception of class structure and class identifications by young people in objectively vulnerable labour market conditions in Poland and Germany. Drawing on 123 biographical interviews with young people in both countries, it demonstrates that young precarious Poles and Germans tend to identify themselves against the ‘middle class’ – understood variously in the two countries – and attribute the sources of economic wealth and social status in their societies to individual merits and entrepreneurship. Positioning oneself in the broad middle and limited identification with the precariat is explained by the youth transition phase, country-specific devaluation of class discourses and the effects of individualisation.

Is everyone really middle class? Social class position and identification in Alberta

“…Most people identify as members of the middle class and tend to place themselves toward the center of the social hierarchy in cross‐national studies, regardless of the specific measure used (Duman, 2020; Evans & Kelly, 2004). National studies on New Zealand (Haddon, 2015), England (McGovern & Nazroo, 2015), Germany (Präg, 2020), Poland (Trappmann et al., 2017), Denmark (Harrits & Pedersen, 2018), Korea (Kim et al., 2018b), and Canada (Genest‐Grégoire et al., 2019; Livingstone &, Scholtz, 2016) also show a strong preference for identifying as middle class. When so many people identify as middle class, there are often discrepancies between individuals’ subjective perceptions of their social class and objective measures of individuals’ social class.…”

“…Finally, status maximization also notes that individuals consider future social positions in determining their subjective social positions. Here, individuals’ sense of class identity may not just reflect their present income and social position, but also what they expect in the future (Dorling, 2014; Langlois & Goudreault, 2019; Trappmann et al., 2021).…”

Becoming an Activist: Individualisation and a Democratic Contentious Ethos in ‘How to’ Books

“…More measured approaches reposition individualisation as a partial and open-ended process (e.g. Dawson, 2012; Hookway, 2012; Rasborg 2017; Taylor, 1989; Trappmann et al, 2021). Individualisation describes one and not the mode of societalisation in late modernity, has deep historical roots and unfolds in many ways.…”

Labor and Inequalities: A Bibliometric Analysis of International Literature

“…These inequalities are, above all, explained by sociodemographic characteristics and social properties of individuals and social groups, such as social class, place of birth, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, physical characteristics, etc. [7][8][9][10].…”