Navigating class dynamics at university has never been easy if you’re a working-class student. And in today’s political climate, it can be a minefield. The truth is, we are stuck in a balancing act between our backgrounds and our beliefs. Stuck in the middle of two ends of a divided political spectrum. Stuck at the brunt of point-scoring and vicious jabs from both sides. In other words, the odds are stacked overwhelmingly against us when it comes to finding our footing in an environment that’s all about establishing identities and picking a side.
Politics and the Personality Split
Class remains one of the central elements when it comes to creating university culture. Since students of a certain habitus tend to gravitate towards similar universities, the result is that many academic institutions remain perpetually elitist. Working-class students at elitist universities often adapt to this by developing a new identity through a ‘student’ and ‘home’ personality split.
This is a long-recognised phenomenon, but little has actually been done to heal the rift. In fact, in my experience, the identity work required to navigate between your uni identity and your home one can be even more trying as different sides of the country’s political spectrum become ever more hostile towards one another. Largely, the sides of this political spectrum are divided by university graduates vs non-graduates.
Educational background is key to Britain’s political divide. A person with no educational qualifications, for example, is roughly two times more likely to vote for a party on the right — namely Reform UK or the Conservatives — than a degree holder. Ironically, the policies of such parties seem to act against this predominantly working-class demographic. We can see this in Reform UK’s pledge to slash public spending by £50 billion, despite warnings that this would devastate frontline community services relied on by working-class communities. As mind-boggling as it may seem, such parties continue to attract working-class voters to their camps.
The ‘Anti-Establishment’ Card
However, the lure of the far-right is not totally inexplicable. In the wake of austerity and in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, these parties hold a quality that traditional parties lack. It is the same factor that won Trump the votes of low-income and rural Americans: anti-establishmentism. Gone are the days of left-wing punks dominating the political sphere. In are the days of wealthy elites and their armies of voters from deprived constituencies. Some of the key members of these hated establishments are, of course, universities, or as Reform UK’s Home Affairs Spokesperson calls them, ‘indoctrination camps for left-wing ideology.’
So …, where does this political dissatisfaction with left-wing rhetoric leave working-class university students?
Taken out of our habitat, we are dumped in an alien environment. Politically, it may at first seem more agreeable if you too, being a university student, also lean towards the left of the political divide — it can even feel refreshing. But once this novelty fades, it can become impossible to ignore the stark class divide between your home and university communities.
In my experience at a tier-one university that persistently fails to promote social mobility, I was surrounded by people from privileged backgrounds. Being a first-generation student from a working-class, state-school background, I experienced a heavy case of imposter syndrome. I quickly learned that to be taken seriously by this network of private-schooled peers, I had to make an effort to blend in. This largely consisted of not mentioning my parents’ jobs, my school, or our budget-friendly family holidays. As a history and politics student, I became acutely aware of politically charged comments and jokes from the politically educated and privileged members of my cohort. It was clear that these seemingly harmless exchanges were, in nature, intentionally hostile towards the working class. They poked at the tendency of our communities to vote against themselves, usually laughing at the aforementioned educational divide across the political spectrum.
The Social Media Mirror
This attitude is also reflected on social media where, in an environment that puts everyone from everywhere onto the same platforms, the educational divide is clear as ever. It is standard for posts from left-leaning camps to deem right-wing voters as uneducated racists, portray them as stupid, and indulge in the great irony of the poor voting against their own economic interests. Likewise, the right side of the camp is not big on kindness either. It deems university students and graduates as lefty loonies: victims of left-wing political indoctrination. No doubt spurred on by the vicious and relentless comments, it becomes inevitable that sneering at the working class and labelling them as antisocial chavs has its consequences in flaring up hostility and scepticism among a wave of right-wing voters towards the educated, ‘intellectually superior’ establishment class.
This pent-up hostility, fuelled by social media, remains heavy on both sides of the political spectrum. Returning home from an elitist university where classism is veiled by jabs at the state of working-class politics — the flag brigades, the ‘Brexit geezers’ — it can be yet another isolating culture shock. For me, it was the first time I was reminded of the palpable effects of demeaning attitudes towards the white working class after witnessing it first-hand. The street I grew up in sat draped in English flags, the remains of the immigration protests that swept our community. I know this is not an isolated image. Students in a similar position will, on returning home, have been greeted by the same right-wing populist wave in their communities — particularly after the local elections. On May 7, Reform UK saw a gain of 1,244 councillors and took control of 114 councils across England, while mainstream parties were pushed to the periphery.
Students from poorer backgrounds feel increasingly isolated as they navigate their way through this politically motivated class warfare. At home, we face scepticism. At university, our identities are challenged and destroyed. Pretty soon, you begin to experience a strange sense that, in a bid to progress upwards in the class system, you have turned your back on the people that made you, and that they have turned their backs on you. Yet, despite this initial severing, your class identity continues to stick out like a snorkle in the pool of privilege that is an elitist university. The identity work undertaken becomes increasingly tiring, even degrading. This political divide infects both uni and home life, leaving working-class students who managed to take the leap and give all this ‘social mobility’ talk a try in a febrile tightrope act as our class is mocked at uni, and our education is mocked at home.
So, for those reading — no matter what political camp you’re in — it is time to recognise the impact of hostility across the political and educational divides and the people caught in the middle. The bigger the divide between the political spectrum and the class spectrum, the bigger the split in our identity. Eventually, crossing the line between the two becomes increasingly difficult and perhaps even dangerous.
DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.
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