Class, culture, and barriers to mobility - Prof. Annette Lareau

In this lecture, Annette presents qualitative research revealing the nuanced ways cultural knowledge can be consequential in mobility journeys, based on research in the USA with a racially-diverse sample of young people from different class locations. This includes longitudinal data from two books she has written: one that highlights how young adults’ knowledge of navigating institutional barriers can have key consequences; and another that illuminates how organisations routinely made errors that thwarted the paths of refugees in Philadelphia from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She discusses the impact of these errors, particularly in the delivery of services, and how cultural knowledge was essential to untangling the “knots” that arise. Annette Lareau is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, she is also a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Prof. Louise Archer, UCL IOE (Chair)