Class acts? Working class student officers in students’ unions

Abstract

This article explores the recent emergence of ‘working-class student officer’ roles in students’ unions associated with elite UK universities. These student representative roles are designed to represent the interests of working-class students within their universities and sit alongside student representatives for liberation groups and/or student communities. Based on interviews with postholders and using Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field and Reay’s applications of a ‘reflexive habitus’, I explore how these students have come to assert a public and political ‘working-class student’ identity within their universities. Their commentaries reveal the ‘makings of class’ in a context where students are very aware of claims for recognition and the ‘hidden injuries of class’ and offer an insight into how working-class students are finding new ways to navigate their classed identities in HE.

Keywords:

• Students’ unions
• higher education
• Bourdieu
• social class
• students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The establishment of a ‘working-class liberation officer’ by St Hilda’s, Oxford in Nov 2016 was covered in The Times, Daily Mail, Express and The Guardian, with headlines including ‘Over sensitive and so easily offended’ and ‘Stop the chav taunts chaps!’. Further press coverage of roles at The University of Manchester in Jan 2017 and the Oxford SU ‘Class Act’ campaign in Sep 2017 took a similar tone, criticising the universities for establishing ‘patronising’ and ‘silly’ roles. The YUSU campaign, covered by campus media, included several personal criticisms on the conduct of the campaigns and the politics of their leaders.

2 Set up by former London School of Economics’ Working Class Officer campaigners, #Britainhasclass has campaigned for greater representation of working-class voices in the arts and for the establishment of working-class officers at universities. https://britainhasclass.org/about,

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [ES/P0007461/1].