8 - Conclusion: Global lessons

Summary

This book is based on a sociological analysis and policy discussion of educational stratification, meritocracy and widening participation. The theory of Pierre Bourdieu has been particularly helpful in illuminating our analysis, notably his concept of cultural capital. His intellectual legacy has transformed understanding of educational inequality and its complexities.

Our study is also informed by empirical research based on the experience and aspirations of students, parents, teachers and youth and community workers living and working in disadvantaged areas and communities in the European Union (Ireland). The participants’ voices contextualise the profound issues at stake, which are global in scope.

The analysis takes place at a time when major changes are occurring globally in post-industrial society, which have produced new forms of labour based on educational attainment, new identities – the appearance of a ‘left-behind’ class – and changed political allegiances – the emergence working-class conservatism. The precariousness of life for working-class and ethnic young people in the gig economy is the devastating social reality of our times. It is potentially returning social relations to the inequalities of Victorian society, as the safety net of the welfare state is gradually dismantled. In this closing chapter we address the future of education through the prism of transformative change and what it would look like in a world liberated from Aristotle's hierarchical prescription for society.

The symbolic and material treatment of young people in post-industrial society reflects broad social and cultural shifts placing education at the centre of youth policy. While these changes have transformed the lives of many young people for the better, others have been left behind. This has created a potentially dangerous aspirational-achievement gap in global society. For disadvantaged working-class young people, biographical choices, lifestyles and consumption are limited and identities destabilised by precarious lives. Poverty and marginalisation constrain their lives and generate a sense of powerlessness, social discredit and hopelessness, leaving them viewing themselves as ‘minor citizens’ (Powell et al, 2012). Higher education has emerged in this new social order as a pivotal societal influence in terms of the pursuit of social equality and human flourishing. It offers new grounds for hope for many young people, but does it pass the social justice test?