Mobility and stability: post-graduate employment experiences of working-class students

The transition from university to the graduate labour market has become increasingly competitive. As university degrees no longer offer a guarantee for success, graduates mobilise other forms of capital to gain a competitive advantage. First-in-family and working-class students are seen to be disadvantaged as they lack access to the types of economic, social and personal capital employers prefer. This article is based on a qualitative longitudinal study of first-in-family, working-class students in Canada. Starting university in 2005 with very high ambitions and goals for substantial mobility, I will show how most gradually revised these goals over the 16 years they have been followed in the study, and how they engaged in a range of strategies to negotiate their potential working-class disadvantages to find career success. They further evoked a broader notion of mobility beyond career achievement, in that they also discussed personal/intellectual growth through education, their ability to develop and accumulate middle-class cultural capital, while not abandoning their working-class roots, and the importance of stability over status.