Meritocracy, social mobility and a new form of class domination

Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an ‘effective’ way to represent social justice and legitimise–explain away–class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic ‘success’ and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment–Chinese schooling–this paper aims to discuss the relation of meritocracy to upward social mobility and class domination. Our analysis raises questions about the notion of ‘success’ in a meritocratic environment and suggests the operation of a new form of symbolic domination in relation to these working-class high-achievers. Through their ‘successes’ at school, they are distanced from their working-class localities and histories, while they also remain outside of the middle-class sensibilities that they aspire to–they become a ‘third class’ whose core values reside in meritocracy itself. There is no transcendence of class here rather a different form of distinction and exclusion.