Zombie states, adrenalised academics and spectral shadows: A transclass perspective on social mobility

The over-riding theme of autobiographical social mobility narratives is the celebration of individual success. However, the analysis in Chantel Jacquet’s book Transclasses develops a very different understanding. In this article, I draw on Jacquet’s interpretation, and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, to weave into a common thread social mobility strands from writing from across the 20th and 21st centuries. First, I look at Education and the Working Class , written in the 1960s, followed by Pierre Bourdieu’s Sketch for a Self-Analysis . I interlace both texts with contemporary writing by Cynthia Cruz and Fran Lock, poets and essayists from US and UK working-class backgrounds, and my own autobiographical writing, in order to develop a perspective that recognises the salience of gender for social mobility journeys. Throughout, I draw on the concept of habitus developed in my own work, and that of Skeggs, to make links between individuals’ inner emotional worlds, their affective dispositions, and external social and structural processes.