Working-class Men's Constructions of Masculinity and Negotiations of (Non)Participation in Higher Education

“Additionally, a number of the men talked about the middle-class ‘plan’ or ‘direction’ (Archer & Hutchings, 2000) as ‘the norm’, against which they positioned their own non-participation as ‘abnormal’.”

“Risk, according to Beck and Giddens is supposed to be an individualized process yet the individualization thesis neatly covers over the collective class risk for working-class students considering higher education (see also Archer et al. 2001, Hutchings and Archer 2001).”

“Archer and Hutchings (2000, p. 572) have explored different concepts of social class and how working-class students talk about families’ involvement and their constructions of identities through higher education (Archer & Hutchings, 2000; Archer et al., 2001).”

“Gender is also important, with occupational aspirations especially shaped by traditional discourses about masculinity and femininity in relation to the skills and attributes associated with particular types of job (Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001; Archer, Hollingworth, and Mendick 2010).”

“Additionally, Archer, Pratt, and Phillips (2001) wrote that working-class families experience higher levels of risk than middle- class families; subsequently, in their study, they found that working-class men experience higher levels of illness and poor health, which in turn affected the…”

“With data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), I use propensity-score matching to investigate whether encouragement influences the likelihood of students enrolling in (1) advanced high school (A-level) courses and (2) a university degree course.”

“However, most of this research has not been discussed in terms of structure and agency.”

“Further analyses of the women participants and non-participants have been presented in various conference papers, e.g. Hutchings et al (2000) and Archer et al (2001).”

“…that though, for girls, hard work and conscientiousness in school is seen as desirable (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005), such behavior is inconsistent with a “cool” masculinity characterized by dominance, strength, and “effortless achievement” (Epstein, 1998; Archer, Pratt, and Phillips, 2001).”

“For example, researchers have written extensively about the association between analytical, mathematical, and scientific skills and the male gender [76,77], whilst social, communication, and organisation skills are generally associated with the female gender [76,78].”

“Young people from both backgrounds aspire to gain modest financial security in the short term, without going via higher education.”

“Working class men’s identity is closely linked to having a job and an income (Trondman 1995; Collinson and Hearn 1996; Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 1996; Hill 1998; Tett 2000; Archer et al. 2001; Archer and Leathwood 2003; Archer and Yamashita 2003), which is probably not compatible with entering higher education, when t…”

“…analytical, mathematical and scientific skills’ association with masculinity (Due 2014; Gonsalves, Danielsson, and Pettersson 2016; Kahn 2009), while social, communication and organisational skills are generally associated with femininity (Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001; Due 2014; Kahn 2009).”

“There are no tuition fees in Sweden; however, being dependent on a student loan for quite a long time is likely to restrain potential applicants from lower classes (Archer et al , 2001 ; Reay, 2003 ).”

“McGivney (1999, p. 61) has also suggested that the poor image of previous youth training programmes can partially be implicated in the low take up (and self-exclusion) of young men from such schemes (see also Archer et al., 2001).”

“Thus, the disciplinary machinery works partly through mobilizing discourses of masculinity that served to strengthen and toughen the boys (see also Archer et al., 2001; Dolan, 2011), partly by evoking sanctions when the young people performed badly.”

“For example, Archer et al. (2001) provide a compelling analysis of the relationship between working class men’s constructions of masculinity, ethnicity and pro- and anti-university discourses.”

“…and its relationship with class and ethnicity can inform working men’s decisions not to participate in a programme of study in HE, with the conceptualization of university students in a framework of negative, middle class masculinity significantly alien to their own lives (Archer et al., 2001).”

“How social class and SES are related to attainment and progress can vary drastically by gender and ethnicity (Easterbrook & Hadden, 2021; Strand, 2014), but so do under-standings and conceptualizations of higher education (Archer et al., 2013, 2001).”

“…high wage levels and plentiful current job opportunities, and being linked closely to a work-based ideology linked closely to a macho masculinity (Archer et al., 2001; Nayak, 2003b; Warrington, 2008), such stereotypical career choices for girls are traditionally lower paid and more restricted…”

“There has been a major development of theoretical and empirical work in relation to identities and to masculinities (see Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Kerfoot & Whitehead, 1998a, 2000; Hearn, 1999; Archer et al., 2001).”

“Roberts (2012) and Archer and Phillips (2001) recognised a similar manifestation of masculinity in their interview research.”

“White working-class males (and some black ones) interviewed by Archer, Pratt, and Phillips ( 2001 ) thought they would have to give up all social life and live on a low income, doing unrelenting hard work, with no guarantees of ultimate success in the job market, while having no ‘fun’ ( 2001 , 437).”

“…the production of a particular kind of ‘culturally-specific … class-specific’ version of academic masculinity, which continues into university and which working-class young men simply do not identify with (Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001, 2005; Cleary et al. 2007; Connell 1989, 298; Willis 1977).”

“education (Archer et al., 2001), thus working against their own interests (Harper, 1996).”

“While many feel that they are of a similar academic standard to other students, they may nonetheless perceive little social solidarity with students of other social class backgrounds (Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001).”

“First, influenced by social class (Scott 1995 ; Reay 2001 ; Archer and Leatherwood 2003 ; Burke 2006 ), they do not perceive education to be for men like themselves (Marks, Turner, and Osborne 2003 ; Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001 ).”

“While there are many barriers which contribute to the struggle of non-traditional males at university (see Stahl, McDonald, and Young 2021, 2021; Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001), one of the most notable is the university setting itself.”

“The over-arching analytic construct was identity formation conceptualised as ‘multiple, fluid and shifting… and as a process of “becoming”, in which young men construct and use racialised, classed, gender identities’ (Archer, Pratt, and Phillips 2001, 432).”

“Archer et al (2001) researched the higher education was seen almost solely as a route to a higher salary.”

“2007 ) and others which use rich data to examine the complex ways in which constructions of masculinity impact on men’s engagement with learning (Archer, Pratt, and Philips 2001 ).”

“This is reminiscent of work by Archer, Pratt, and Phillips (2001) where some of the males in their study felt that their participation in higher education would leave them as disassociated from their class identity where they expressed a strong inclination not to change (see also Stahl, Asplund,…”

“…the transition of low socio-economic-status males from secondary school into university or the labour market and how these experiences influence their aspirations as well as their acquisition of cultural capital (with the exception of Archer et al., 2001; MacLeod, 2009; Shefer et al., 2007).”