precariat - ReviseSociology

The precariat refers to people living and working usually in a series of short-term jobs without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, social protection or relevant protective legislation.

The variety of jobs the precariat does varies enormously as this can include any type of agency work such as cleaning, or factory work, anyone working on a zero-hours contract doing delivery work for the likes of Amazon or Sports Direct and also technically self-employed ‘gig-economy’ workers such as Uber drivers or anyone working for Deliveroo.

The precariat from the Great British Class Survey

The precariat includes a mixture of local people and migrants and the average age profile of this class is 50, according the Great British Class Survey.

Incomes are usually low for people in the Precariat, and crucially incomes are often not secure, meaning that people can go without work for days, weeks or even months and may have to periodically supplement their (lack of) income with benefits.

This class is also the least likely to own their own homes, the most likely to rent and they have the lowest levels of cultural and social capital.

The term Precariat links its members vulnerability to their structural location in society and the structural instability of a global labour market. It recognises that there is mobility and overcomes the idea of them being fixed outside ot the class system.

The precariat includes benefit claimants, most of whom claim temporarily in between periods of precarious short term work, the kind of work that is increasing rapidly in neoliberal Britain, and increasingly less of a stepping stone to more secure and better paid employment.

Many members of the precariat are caught in a cycle of entrapment: they are unable to find work which is long term enough and with prospects of progression for them to gain skills and progress up the career and income ladder, rather they move from one low-status job to a period of no job and then back into another low-status job.

The Underclass: misleading and derogatory

Charles Murray famously developed the concept of the ‘Underclass’ in the 1980s to designate a group of people beneath the class system and excluded from the social mainstream.

According to Murray the main features of the Underclass were a long-term dependency on benefits which spanned across generations such that younger people were socialised into an anti-work, high-crime and teen-pregnancy culture.

Research in the UK has shown that the existence of the Underclass is a myth, mainly because very few benefits claimants claim benefits long term, most are in either part-time or intermittent employment and claim to top-up their small incomes or short-term between periods of unemployment, so there is no group of people beneath the class system.

However the mainstream media has a long history of perpetuating the myth that there is a ‘dangerous class’ of poor people who are work shy, criminal and abuse the benefits system.

When the Great British Class Survey was conducted, for example, there were a lot of documentaries about benefits claimants such as Benefits Street which reinforced the idea that there was an underclass of lazy, determined welfare spongers.

The Precarait/ (mislabelled) Underclass are also loathed and laughed at by some in other sectors of the population, and we see this most obviously through the derogatory use of the Chav label.

The Precariat are seen as old fashioned, rigid and inflexible, and their ways of being are devalued, with many people believing that foreigners are better at filling low paid jobs in Britain rather than poor lazy British people.

It maybe because of the breaking down of the clear class boundaries between middle and working class that we denigrate the poor with more vigour – as if rallying against the bottom unites the rest of us and shores up our own identity as not one of them.

Culture, Identity and the Precariat

Despite the fact that many of the negative associations are due to right-wing bigotry and media stereotyping, the precariat know they are looked down on and they would rather stay among their own which unfortunately makes it more likely that the Precariat do, indeed, become something of an isolated and segregated class.

Many in the Precariat manage this by close identification with the local and through complicated and voracious notions of belonging which may manifest in what they wear, what they like and strong connection to their local communities.

The Precariat are so painfully aware of the level of social shame associated with their class that only 1% of Great British Class Survey respondents were from the Precariat, besides them making up 15% of the population. They wanted to avoid a process that involved putting them at the bottom.

The precariat have the lowest levels of cultural capital, they have a lot less knowledge about ‘high’ culture especially and would rather NOT go out to public venues to conspicuously consume such cultural products.

Rather they prefer to engage in activities either at home with close friends and families or in their local communities: cultural activities are more about the people less about social display.

Signposting and Sources

This material should be relevant to anyone studying the culture and identity option as part of their A-level in sociology.

This post was summarised from Savage (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century.

To find out more about the Precariat you might like to do the Great British Class Survey.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

Social Class refers to divisions in society based on economic and social status. People in the same social class typically share a similar level of wealth, educational achievement, type of job and income.

Social Class is one of the most important concepts within AS and A Level Sociology because of the relationship between social class background and life chances (or lack of them) and the debate over the extent to which social class background determines an individual’s life chances.

The concept of social class is certainly relevant today – according to the latest 2022 data from YouGov 68% of young people think that their life chances are ‘broadly determined’ by their parents socioeconomic backgrounds…

Many people in the United Kingdom have an idea of what social class is, but Sociologists define the concept in more precise terms.

Below I look at ‘common conceptions’ of social class before moving on to look at two ways of measuring social class – The Registrar General’s Social Class Scale and The New British Class Survey

Common Conceptions of Social Class

The classic formulation of social class in Britain is to see Britain as being divided into three classes: working, middle and upper class. Social Class, is however, open to change, and most agree that the last two decades have seen the emergence of an underclass, with little prospect of full time employment. These four terms are in common usage and we have to start somewhere, so here are some starting definitions which you should aim to move beyond.

Social Class	Definition/ Defining Features
Working class	Those individuals engaged in manual work, often having low levels of educational achievement. The classic, traditional working class jobs include heavy labouring and factory based work.
Middle class	Those individuals engaged in non-manual work, often having higher levels of educational achievement. Classic middle class jobs include everything from doctors and lawyers to clerical workers.
Upper class	The elite class that controls the majority of wealth and power in British society.

According to the UK government’s 2021 Social Mobility Barometer 48% of respondents defined themselves as working class, 36% as middle class and 0% as upper class. 79% of people said they felt there was a large gap between social classes today.

This means that 84% of respondents were prepared to identify themselves with a particular social class background, which suggests that these broad ‘class divisions’ have meaning for people.

The disadvantages of common conceptions of social class is that they lack clarity – although most of us have heard of social class and have some idea of what it means to be a member of a social class, exactly what constitutes middle or working class, for example, is subjective and varies from person to person.

This is precisely why socologists have striven to develop more objective classifications of social class – and below I look at two of these – The registrar General’s Social Class Scale and the New British Class Survey

The Registrar General’s Social Class Scale (1911)

Sociologists use more nuanced categories of social class, than the common sense conceptions above. The way in which sociologists group people into social classes has changed considerably over time, mainly because of the changing occupational structure. To illustrate this just two examples are provided below.

For most of the 20^th Century social class was measured using the Registrar General’s Scale. When this was originally conceived in 1911 it was based on the alleged standing in the community of the different occupational groups.

Occupations were divided into the following:

Manual occupations – those that involve a fair amount of physical effort. These are also known as blue collar occupations and are seen as working class.
Non-manual occupations – those that involve more mental effort, such as professions and office work. These are also known as white collar occupations and are seen as middle class.

Registrar General’s Scale: 1911-Present Day
Social Class	Examples of occupation
I Professional and managerial	Accountant, doctor
II Intermediate	Teacher, farmer
III Non-manual – skilled occupations	Police officer, sales representative
III Manual – skilled occupations	Electrician, bus driver
IV Semi-skilled manual	Farm worker, postman/woman
V Unskilled manual	Labourer, cleaner

Strengths and Limitations of the Registrar General’s Social Class Scale

The problems with the above scale is that the occupational structure in the UK has moved on – there are many more unskilled non manual jobs – in call-centres for example, and there is no room for the long-term or intermittently unemployed in the above scale either.

However, even today the majority of occupations fit pretty unambiguously into one of the categories, and six categories broadly organised along educational achievement and income is very easy to manage if we wish to make comparisons, and if we stick to these six simple categories, there does appear to be a historical relationship between these social class groupings and life chances – especially where life expectancy is concerned.

The New British Class Survey

The New British Class Survey was an attempt to update the Registrar General’s Social Class Scale and make it more relevant to contemporary Britain.

The survey was conducted by the BBC in 2011, in conjunction with The London School of Economics, recently conducted an online survey of 161 000 people. The survey measured three aspects of social class – economic capital, cultural capital and social capital.

Economic Capital – Measured by a combination of household income, household savings and the value of house owned.

Cultural Capital – The level of engagement in ‘highbrow’ and ’emerging’ culture. The amount of ‘Highbrow’ culture people consumed was measured by scoring how engaged they were with classical music, attending stately homes and so on. How much ’emerging’ cultural capital people owned was measured by scoring engagement with video games, a preference for hip-hop etc.

Social Capital – Measured using the average status or importance of people’s social contacts and the number of occupations people said they knew.

According to this survey, there are now 7 new classes in the United Kingdom…..

Elite (6% of the population) – The most privileged class in Great Britain who have high levels of all three capitals. Their high amount of economic capital sets them apart from everyone else.

Established Middle Class (25% of the population) Members of this class have high levels of all three capitals although not as high as the Elite. They are a gregarious and culturally engaged class.
Technical Middle Class (6%) – A new, small class with high economic capital but seem less culturally engaged. They have relatively few social contacts and so are less socially engaged.
New Affluent Workers (14%) – This class has medium levels of economic capital and higher levels of cultural and social capital. They are a young and active group.

Emergent Service Workers (15%) This new class has low economic capital but has high levels of ‘emerging’ cultural capital and high social capital. This group are young and often found in urban areas.
Traditional Working Class (19%) – This class scores low on all forms of the three capitals although they are not the poorest group. The average age of this class is older than the others.
Precariat (15%) – The most deprived class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital. The everyday lives of members of this class are precarious.

Strengths and Limitations of the New British Class Survey

This seems to be a clear improvement on previous class scales – it seems to describe social class divisions as they actually are in the UK (you might say it’s a more valid measurement of social class) – and the inclusion of ‘lowest’ class – the precariat reflects the important fact that many people are in low-paid work are in poverty because of the precarious nature of their flexible and/ or part-time employment. It also includes more indicators (or aspects of class) and reflects the importance of property ownership which only typically comes with age.

However, because it includes more aspects of class and because it is more subjective, it is simply harder to ‘get your head around’ – the divisions aren’t as clear cut, and it’s more difficult to make comparisons – of which there are few available because this is such a new measurement. Still, these aren’t necessarily weaknesses if that’s the way social class really does manifest itself in reality in contemporary Britain.