How children negotiate and make sense of social class boundaries

ABSTRACT

This article aims to understand how children in a superdiverse Western European city actively negotiate their social position. Based on in-depth interviews with children aged 11–13, we highlight how a diverse group of children give meaning to social inequality and assess how they position themselves towards different socio-economic groups. We argue that children not only show an acute awareness of social differences but also engage in symbolic boundary-making to secure a positive self-identity. We analyse how children describe the ‘middle-class’ according to their own position, to present themselves as neither rich nor poor but as ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’. However, as the children’s narratives reveal very different life chances, they use different identity management strategies to construct their own ‘ordinariness’.

KEYWORDS:

• Boundary work
• childhood
• meaning-making
• social class
• social identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data were generated from https://stadincijfers.antwerpen.be/?var=natcube (demographic data) and https://www.agodi.be/cijfermateriaal-leerlingenkenmerken (school composition data).

Additional information

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [grant number 1112819N]. Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek.