ILPC 2026

In Labour Process Analysis, workers’ subjectivity is being addressed in various ways. One aspect involves workers’ ingenuity and subjective contributions at work. Another one relates to workers’ resistance, misbehaviour and acquiescence within the structured antagonism between management and labour. In this context, the concept of class is important as it denotes a social identity that involves shared experiences, interests, loyalties and values (Marks/Thompson 2010).

Our paper takes up some of the debates on class and the labour process but does so from a particular perspective. Informed by Bourdieu’s theory it highlights the formation of subjectivity through the social origin of class positions. This means that we are less concerned with the impact of working conditions on workers’ class consciousness and the dynamics of control and resistance. Rather, we are addressing the external factors of workplace dynamics in the sense of prior orientations to work (Goldthorpe/Lockwood 1968) or the workers’ habitus (Bourdieu 1987) more widely. The focus is on the fit between workers’ subjectivity as shaped by their class origin on the one hand and, on the other, the exigencies of work and the social relations in the workplace. In other words, we look at the formation of the concrete subject in order to understand how workers refer to their work.

The paper draws on a study of young blue-collar workers in manufacturing, aged between 20 and 34 years old, to explore how classed perceptions and meanings of work structure their practices at the work place. Based on 20 problem-cantered interviews conducted in different regions and industrial sectors in Austria between 2014 and 2016 the paper shows how growing up in the working class the young workers develop specific dispositions (or habitus) regarding work, which is, among other things, based on the deployment of the body and manual labour.

These dispositions, expressed in practices, expectations and aspirations, lay the ground for workers to feel at home at working-class jobs, similar to what Paul Willis found in his study in the 1970ies. Apart from social class, gender plays a major role in structuring these matches as women still have to struggle for acceptance in typically male dominated manual labour jobs. Yet, while this homology is crucial for workers feeling of belonging, it also constrains efforts of change and therefore contributes to perpetuating class relations. Overall, the paper contributes not only to bringing in the subject, it also addresses the often neglected topic of specific formations of subjectivity in the context of social class.