Stephen J Ball and Carol Vincent

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Precarity, Identity and Place Researching
contexts of working class subjectivity

• Stephen J Ball and Carol Vincent
• CeCEPS
• Institute of Education, University of London

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Back to BasicsThe sociological imagination
enables its possessor to understand the larger
historical scene in terms of its meaning for the
inner life and the external career of a variety
of individuals a grasp of history and biography
and the relation between the two in society (
C. Wright-Mills)
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What we experience in various and specific
milieux, I have noted, is often caused by
structural changes. Accordingly, to understand
the changes of many personal milieux we are
required to look beyond them. And the number and
variety of such structural changes increase as
the institutions within which we live become more
embracing and more intricately connected to one
another. To be aware of the idea of social
structure and to use it with sensibility is to be
capable of tracing such linkages among a great
variety of milieux. (C. Wright-Mills p. 17)
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Here we want to draw on an interview study of 70
working class families in 2 London locations -
Battersea and Stoke Newington - locations we have
researched in before with middle class
familiesThe research began with issues of
childcare, work and parenting - and choice.
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This is one of an inter-locking set of studies
located in time and space. Stephens choice
studies (1996, 1997. 2002a, 2002b, 2003), Carols
parent studies (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002) and
work done together (1998, 2004a,b,c. 2006),
drawing on Tim Butlers studies of gentrification
in London (Butler with Robson 2003).
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Flows of history, complexity, locality and
meaning.Situated also within decision-making,
life course and futurity - in the flow of
lives.Social lives do not consist of
statistical relations between variables but the
intersection of histories, discourses,
structures, oppressions, identities, values and
desires - this is complexity - qualitative
research can begin to explore and examine this
complexity through the lives of specific and
different subjects in specific and different
settings.These settings are marked by precarity
and struggle.
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Substantively our work addresses Changing forms
and forms of change in - Urban processes -
Labour market participation/gender
identities - Welfare/work policies -
Parenting/mothering - Migration
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Our interpretational work draws from and
(hopefully) contributes to a set of analytic
conceptsIdentity, discourse, narratives,
intersectionality, values, conditions of action,
structures in the head, etc.
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To a great extent the lives of these women and
their families are constituted within a set of
struggles the struggle to be a good mother, the
struggle to be a good citizen/a good worker and
thus the struggle to be responsible and
respectable over and against the struggle to
make ends meet to manage to cope, to carry on
some kind of normal life. They struggle between
the state and the estate. This is
precarity.Ill get paid and then my wages will
pay for my bills and then thats it. And Ill get
my tax credits and then that will pay for the
nursery but its hard to separate because, like,
Im struggling financially my out-goings are
more than my earnings (Jackie, black, lone
mother, admin assistant, SN).
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Struggle The balance between work and
childcare is not just a matter of money it is
also a matter of time these women are time
poor, and often running close to exhaustion, they
are constantly tired, and often failing to live
up to their own hopes and best intentions, not
being the mothers they want to be and think they
should be.Every day Im, like, up and running
six oclock in the morning getting ready. I have
hardly any time. By the time you get out and you
rush to work and then you finish work and then
you rush to get the children, you come home and
do dinner and put them to bed and. It is, its
hard (Hazel, black, live-out partner, nursery
officer, SN)they do miss out on a lot of
things, me being there and running the home and
even things like making dinner, we all sit down
to dinner. Ive done part time work but, you
know, financially it doesnt pay to work
part-time and raise three children. Its an
impossible task (Jill, black, lone mother, shop
manageress, SN)
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Intersectionality is used here in two senses -
structure/consciousness- processes/identitiesIn
tersectionality signifies the complex,
irreducible, varied and variable effects which
ensue when multiple axis of differentiation
economic, political, cultural, psychic,
subjective and experiential intersect in
historically specific contexts. (Brar Phoenix,
2004) And the Flows of history, discourses, and
policies in those specific contexts.We can only
beginning to understand intersectionality of the
level of specific and different individuals in
specific and different social contexts.
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whether it is used to situate oneself in social
space or to place others, the sense of social
space, like every practical sense, always refers
to the particular situation in which it has to
orient practices (Bourdieu 1986 p. 473).
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Narratives of decline The accounts are shot
through with a whole variety of ambivalences
about the two localities, with a few exceptions,
those who unequivocally love or hate their
neighbourhood. There is a sense of both
rootedness and alienation. The locals are
positive about the nearness of Family, the
vibrancy and familiarity of the areas but these
are contrasted with the dangers of violence and
drugs. Many respondents want to move but dont
want to cut themselves off from their family and
friends and the other things they value.
Paradoxically there is a safety in familiarity,
in knowing an area, how to walk, where to avoid,
there is certainly not a total de-coupling of
selves from the local social (cf. Hey 2005). They
are attached to their localities but unhappy or
fearful about changes and difficulties in them.

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Theres too much violence, too much crimeas you
can see Ive got a metal gate on my door. .But
I dont hang out around here, I just live here
(Jackie, black single mother, admin assist.
SN)Im afraid to come out of my house at night
time, I dont come out of my house at night time
You know once were in the house, my
security gate is locked, and I dont see or
hear anything (Diana, black mother, separated,
post office clerk, SN)theres been, in the lift
area, theres been blood, big pools of blood .
And I dont go out at night, I wont go out at
night. (Andrea, white, single mother, at home,
B).
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DiscoursesIn their struggles and in
managing to cope these families are immersed
within dominant political discourses and norms,
its hallmarks are conventionality and
responsibility. At the end of the day, you
cant depend on benefits. And I think, if you
call yourself a mother, youre meant to look
after your child and do the best for your child,
not sitting down waiting every week for that
money to come in, so you can provide for you and
your child. Obviously I do want to see, I do want
to have time with daughter. I want to have time
like to spend proper time with her every day. I
wouldnt make work my priority, like a whole day
thing, (Chanelle, black young mother, single, at
college, SN)
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Thus, the womens conformity to discourses around
being a good citizen and a good mother. The
majority of our respondents talked in fairly
conventional terms about the behaviour they
wanted their children to adopt or most
particularly to avoid, and their desire for
their children to learn and develop. V I just
want a nice school, like, mix of kids, bunch of
kids, rather than just roughS Thats gonna
teach them good morals as well(Vicki and Sinead,
young mothers, white, at home, B.) They
differed from the middle class mothers in our
earlier research in that they did not necessarily
accept total responsibility for their childrens
development (seeing this in part at least the
role of professionals), nor necessarily develop
clear strategies which focused on the
intellectual, creative and physical development
of their children. They saw their primary
responsibility as loving and nurturing their
children.
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The research asked these families to give a
moral account of themselves - which they were
both very ready and able to do!
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The values and aspirations of almost all of these
women both for themselves and their children also
sit very firmly within dominant discourses around
good citizenship and good parenting. The
mothers who are in paid work are generally
positive about working despite the low pay some
receive and the long hours some work. The mothers
at home with their children were mostly planning
to return to the labour market as their children
get older. Work was seen as a way of providing a
better life for themselves and their children, as
well as adult company and stimulation and is
about being responsible, acting responsibly and
being a role model of proper behaviour to their
children, it is also about self-worth, about
being proud.I enjoy working, I really do. I
couldnt I cant imagine not working, getting
up in the morning and doing nothing with my day
(Daisy, mixed race, lone mother, office
administrator, SN)
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But weve got to do it because, like I was saying
even this morning, you know. Even if I had to
give up work and look- if it came to the crunch
and I couldnt afford to look after- to send
son to the nursery then I would have to give up
work and go back on the system. But the system
is not something that I want to go back on But
its trying to get on the property ladder is
very, very hard, you know. So it is hard. But
Id rather be at work earning something, work for
my money, than ponce off the system, basically.
I thought, Ooh, I think I better get out there
because I dont want them to think that Im. It
gets boring doing the same thing all the time in
the end. But youre not showing nothing to your
children, are you, really? Youre not showing
them, you know, a way of life, or youre not
showing them how to be independent by themselves.
You know, you dont show them that its not all
about free money, you have to work, and when you
want something, you know, you have to work for
it, you cant just sit there and expect it to
fall in your hands. Because the benefits thing
is just a little stepping stone until you can get
yourself on your feet. (Diana, black mother,
separated, post office clerk, Stoke Newington
(SN))
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Conditions of action The realisation of
these imperatives is set within a set of real
constraints and frustrations poor housing on
difficult estates low wages , for some, lone
parenthood time-poverty the avoidance of
dangerous others finding good childcare or
schooling limited access to transport variable
access to child-friendly employment policies.
Family life becomes a struggle to pay your
bills, manage your household, to spend time with
children, and work. The constraints of time and
money especially loom large in these womens
accounts.Parenting is constrained by and
constructed within the limitations of small flats
in high-rise buildings, limited activities, and
prohibitive costs.even just to go out on a
general trip to the park, you even need to have
money in your pocket. Because youll pass the
ice-cream van and like, you know, theyre thirsty
and they want a drink theyve come off the swing
they want a packet of crisps. Like all the way
its spending, spending, so. (Natasha, black
lone mother, at home, B.)
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Structures in the head Maintaining a
distinction between oneself and low status
others who share the same space can be
difficult, and as Watts notes, does not
necessarily lessen feelings of insecurity, urban
anxiety about the locality. Thus tenants also
harboured desires to move out. Of course
moving out of the inner city is also commonly
identified as a desired project by middle class
parents, also in an attempt to escape low status
others and the disorder they apparently cause.
However, there is a clear classed dimension to
such projects as middle class families, through
home ownership and occupational remuneration,
have the economic capital to be to affect such
moves. The respondents in our study were not in
that position. They were keenly aware of the high
prices commanded by housing stock in both
Battersea and Stoke Newington two areas subject
to considerable gentrification. However, other
areas of London and the south-east also command
high prices, rendering moving out unrealisable as
a strategy for many respondents.
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V Theres all these kids out on the estate
running riot til God knows what time of night.
And yeah obviously there is some good parents on
the estate, Im not denying that, and there is
nice children on the estate but theres a hell of
a lot of them who do what the hell they want and
when they want.S And whose parents let them do
it V That aint happening as far as Im
concerned.These women draw clear moral
boundaries between themselves and others, which
as Andrew Sayer points out can produce strange
results (p. 183) and can, as he goes on to say
create a reassuring world of moral simplicities
(p. 185). Moral judgments are used by these women
to mark them off from disreputable and dangerous
class relations and play a key role in
struggles over identity, validity, self-worth
and integrity (Reay, 2005 p. 924).
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Identity These women do not want to be
excluded from the world. They almost all see work
as a meaningful context- not that mothering is
without meaning but full-time mothering lacks
social status and recognition, and to be just a
mum is experienced as a limited and limiting
social role for many. It involves being exempted
for other bits of the social world in which they
want to be involved. Being is being in
(Bourdieu 1983 p.1). For many being a full-time
mother means being something other (Bhaskar
2002 p. 114). Many see work as a crucial part
of their sense of self worth. Irwin (2006)
suggests that these are new kinds of social
identity amongst women (p. 7). Within the domain
of work they make selfhood and entitlement
claims, albeit somewhat ambiguous ones. As one
(Joycelyn) put it, when you stay at home your
brain goes dead
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Qualitative research, which is located and
situated, can convey a sense of the
contradictions and ambivalences and moral and
material struggles within which families and
mothers live their lives.It can capture
something of the complexity of experiences and
practices within the nexus of discourse, policy
and history
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Their lives and trajectories, struggles and
strivings are set within a field of material
contingencies, difficulties, barriers and
discouragements, and ethical ambivalences,
policies and policy discourses which can combine
to wear you down and tire you out. It is not
always clear what to do for the best, prevailing
discourses are contradictory, and the best, the
necessary, the hoped for is simply not always
possible. Financial difficulties, child illness,
family upheavals, living conditions can each or
together confound efforts, exhaust energies and
commitments, and use up short supplies of
emotional capital. Individual qualities are
shaped and tested in a world of physical needs
and demands a world of class inequalities.
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The interplay and complexity of Socio-cultural
changes can be uniquely accessed and researched
through the medium of individual experience.
Within and through these lives are the play of
social change, policy and discursive shifts,
these make up, mediate and contextualise
struggles and coping and the responses which
are the lived experiences and are the
subjectivities of these families. They are
socio/cultural change and tradition, its agents
and its subjects! The challenge is to understand
and theorise change and continuity together - eg.
mothering
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Much of this is simply erased in the moral and
practical simplicities of policy and public
discourses around mothering, policies trade upon
unexamined assumptions which normalise the moral
possibilities of middle class living and the
realities of mothering for the working class are
displaced by easy stereotypes and careless,
patronising and damaging generalisations.Working
class mothers are left to cope with the tensions
between the discursive imperatives of good
mother and good citizen, and those also which
balance respectability with precarity. The
contradictions are such that they sometimes seem
to render as an impossibility the womens search
for respectability and a better life.But may
lead good and rounded and fulfilling if
difficult lives.
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