Exploring Working-Class Identity in Britain

Trinity postgraduate Eilidh Macfarlane has published a paper exploring the prevalence of working-class identity in Britain.

Published in the journal Electoral Studies, the paper seeks to explain the relatively high level of working-class identity in Britain, where three in five people still identify as working class. It finds that this high level of working-class identity is a product of parental socialisation, in the form both of parental social class but also the party they supported. These parental influences, along with one's class identity, also influence the party identities of voters. It concludes that class identity in modern Britain is a strong political identity in both its origins and effects. 

Eilidh Macfarlane is a Dphil student in sociology; she says: ‘My research focuses on elections, public opinion and political identities in Britain and Scotland. One of my particular interests within this is on class identity in Britain – there's a real puzzle as to why so many people in Britain still identify as being working class despite declining numbers actually having working class jobs, and this was the puzzle that motivated this paper. This is a particularly British puzzle as in other countries we've seen middle class identification increase as more people have middle class jobs. 

‘The findings from the paper show a close relationship between class identity and party identity in Britain. Given we're a society so obsessed with class, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that how we think about our own class also reflects our politics. What's particularly interesting though is that this also reflects our parents' politics - who they voted for when we were growing up contribute to explaining how we think about our own place in the world, both politically in our own party identity and socially in our class identity.’