Nicola Ingram Professor of Sociology of Education and Director of the Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Manchester Metropolitan University Monday, March 21, 2022 - 11:00am Meigs Hall, 101 Education Policy Seminar This seminar will discuss inequalities in the graduate labour market in the context of the United Kingdom (UK). Its aim is to provide insights into the ways in which the dominant policy goals of social mobility and graduate employability are experienced by young people from middle-class and working-class backgrounds. The seminar will draw on material from a forthcoming book which traces the unfolding of young graduate lives in the 2010s. It presents the experiences of a cohort of young people who started undergraduate study in England in 2010 and who graduated in 2013/2014. The study (the Paired Peers Project) followed these young people throughout their undergraduate study and for four years post-graduation. Using a longitudinal qualitative approach to exploring transition pathways, we have been able to interrogate and critique the normative discourses of social mobility and aspiration in relation to graduates’ perceptions of their own successes and failures over time. Our extensive and rich data set allows us to think deeply about the assumed link between education and social mobility. Nicola Ingram is Professor of Sociology of Education and Director of the Education and Social Research Institute (ESRI) at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research is focused on young people and social inequalities in education and work. She has published widely on these issues and her recent books include: Working-Class Boys and Educational Success: Teenage Identities, Masculinities and Urban Schooling (Palgrave MacMillan 2018); Educational Choices, Aspirations and Transitions in Europe (Routledge 2018); Higher Education, Social Class and Social Mobility: the Degree Generation (Palgrave MacMillan 2016); and Moving on Up? Unequal Graduate Labour Market Struggles (Bristol University Press, Forthcoming). Nicola is co-founder and co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s (BSA) Bourdieu Study Group, and co-convenor of the BSA Sociology of Education Study Group. She is on the editorial board of three internationally leading sociology journals: the Sociological Review, Sociology and the British Journal of Sociology of Education. This session is part of the McBee IHE Educational Policy Seminar series. Reserve a seat in 101 by Friday, March 18 or register in advance for remote access via Zoom.
