Abstract
Sociological research demonstrates the persistent lack of sociocultural fit the upwardly mobile face within elite settings and how this negatively affects them in numerous outcomes. By contrast, how class mistreatment is (re)produced in routine cross-class interactions within elite settings has received far less empirical attention. Building on 60 interviews, in this article I study how the upwardly mobile experience class mistreatment at selective universities and professional workplaces in Chile. Findings substantiate the continuity of class mistreatment the upwardly mobile face in such elite settings, including various and repeated forms of discrimination and stigmatisation. Findings also show that such class mistreatment is strongly inflected by gender and ethnicity, and plays a key role in shaping the lack of fit the upwardly mobile confront in those elite settings.
Introduction
While upward mobility usually comes with noteworthy rewards, such as greater income and occupational prestige, sociological research challenges the idea that upward trajectories into elite positions is a straightforwardly beneficial or unambiguously positive experience in emotional terms (Born, 2024; Friedman, 2016; Lawler & Payne, 2018; Reay, 2021). Indeed, a well-established literature attributes the numerous strains the upwardly mobile confront in elite settings, such as selective universities and professional workplaces, to their lack of sociocultural fit. Students with a working-class habitus face more trouble developing social ties (Bathmaker et al., 2013, 2016; Reay et al., 2009), managing tough academic choices (Jack, 2016) and partaking in extracurriculars (Stuber, 2011) within selective universities. Crucially, this lack of fit unfavourably affects their academic performance (Pascarella et al., 2004), completion of higher education (Tinto, 2012) and professional attainment (DiMaggio & Mohr, 1985), thwarting their access and career progression in a range of high-status jobs (Ashley & Empson, 2013, 2017; Friedman & Laurison, 2019). This scholarship thus demonstrates the enduring sociocultural incongruency the upwardly mobile experience within such elite settings and the various disadvantageous outcomes associated with it.
By contrast, how class inequality is (re)produced in everyday cross-class interactions within elite institutions has attracted far less empirical attention. Addressing this research gap matters because the impact of what Lareau (2015) calls the ‘long shadow’ of class on the upwardly mobile is not only tied to a lingering sociocultural mismatch but also to how they are (mis)treated within elite settings (DiMaggio, 2012). In this regard, there is bourgeoning evidence indicating that the upwardly mobile reaching elite universities and workplaces face multiple forms of class mistreatment (Ashley, 2022; Jack, 2019; Langhout et al., 2007), including significant intersections with gender (Friedman, 2022; Loveday, 2016) and ethnicity (Bhopal & Myers, 2023; Puwar, 2001, 2004). However, the bulk of this research comes with three striking limitations. First, it does not provide an account for how class mistreatment shapes sociocultural incongruency within elite institutions, particularly how the former may contribute to increase the latter. Second, it either studies class mistreatment in higher education or in professional workplaces, failing to effectively capture the continuity of class mistreatment over time. Third, it narrowly focuses on a handful of societies in the Global North, restricting our understanding of class mistreatment from a wider global perspective.
Tackling these limitations, in this article I empirically study how the upwardly mobile experience class mistreatment across elite universities and workplaces in one noticeable society from the Global South: Chile. Internationally recognised for spearheading neoliberal reforms since the mid-1970s (Fourcade & Babb, 2003), Chile features substantial economic prosperity and a remarkable decline of poverty in recent decades (Edwards, 2023). Yet Chile’s pattern of class mobility is characterised by high fluidity between the middle and lower classes coexisting with robust barriers to upward mobility into the upper occupational echelons (Torche, 2005, 2014). Like most Latin American nations, Chile stands out by its acute income/wealth concentration at the top (World Inequality Database [WID], 2024), which is largely reproduced through exclusive private schooling (Howard et al., 2020), the most selective universities (Villalobos et al., 2020) and the imperviousness of high-status professions (UNDP [United Nations Development Programme], 2017), particularly in top-earning positions (Zimmerman, 2019a).
Against this specific backdrop, and based on 60 life-history interviews, my findings demonstrate the continuity of class mistreatment that the upwardly mobile face across elite universities and professional workplaces in Chile. Drawing on the conceptual tools advanced by studies of ethno-racial exclusion (Lamont et al., 2016), I show how the upwardly mobile experience a continuous, recurrent and extensive range of class mistreatment, which powerfully contributes to their lack of sociocultural fit within elite settings. I further show how such class mistreatment is inflected by gender and ethnicity in ways not fully recognised within the existing sociological literature. Overall, these findings foreground the distinctive forms class mistreatment takes in a Latin America society like Chile, shed new light on the emotional costs of upward mobility (Friedman, 2016) and show the need for stronger intersectional approaches on this topic.
Elite settings, upward mobility and class mistreatment
Elites exert power and influence due to their prominent positions and substantial resources (Cousin et al., 2018; Korsnes et al., 2017), with their practices, dispositions and values holding collective consequences for the governance of education (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009), organisations (Vianello & Moore, 2004), institutions and culture (Scott, 2008). Inspired by Bourdieusian sociology, a growing scholarship claims that elites thrive within these fields because of their greater sociocultural fit, that is, of having a habitus (i.e. class-based ways of seeing, being and acting) that is well ‘attuned’ (Jarness et al., 2019, p. 1416) to the specific functioning of these institutional settings (see also Bourdieu, 1984, 1989; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Khan, 2011; Thiele, 2016). This better fit, sustained by a robust resource portfolio (e.g. economic, cultural and social capitals), largely explains why the privileged tend to successfully access, progress and obtain higher rewards in selective universities (Pascarella et al., 2004; Tinto, 2012) and high-status professions (Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Rivera, 2012, 2015).
Closely aligned with this claim, an ample sociological literature attributes the many hurdles the upwardly mobile confront in elite settings precisely to their lack of sociocultural fit. Students with a working-class habitus, which does not quite belong to selective universities (Aries & Seider, 2005; Granfield, 1991; Lee & Kramer, 2013), experience more difficulties in performing well academically (Pascarella et al., 2004), creating social ties (Bathmaker et al., 2013, 2016; Reay et al., 2009), participating in extracurriculars (Hurst, 2010; Stuber, 2011), completing higher education (Tinto, 2012) and in their ensuing professional advancement (DiMaggio & Mohr, 1985). Indeed, across a range of top-earning jobs, upwardly mobile professionals are blocked from entry, or sorted into lower-income functions, on the basis of their perceived sociocultural fit (Ashley & Empson, 2013, 2017; Rivera, 2012, 2015). Moreover, their insufficient command of prized markers of ‘embodied cultural capital’ (e.g. styles of dress, accent and manners) often lead them to ‘self-eliminate’ from pursuing career progression – a key driver in the ‘class ceiling’ they face at elite workplaces (Friedman & Laurison, 2019).
This expanding scholarship thus substantiates the durable lack of fit the upwardly mobile experience within elite settings and the abundant detrimental outcomes related to it. Strikingly enough, however, how class inequality is (re)produced in daily cross-class interactions across elite institutions has received much less empirical scrutiny. Tackling this research gap matters because the influence of the ‘long shadow’ of class (Lareau, 2015) on the upwardly mobile is not only entwined with a persistent sociocultural mismatch, but also with how they are (mis)treated within elite settings (DiMaggio, 2012). In recent decades, as elite institutions have gradually opened their doors to previously under-represented groups, opportunities for cross-class interactions have grown (Ashley, 2022; Karabel, 2005). Yet these institutions have not substantially altered their class-based underpinnings, or what Ingram and Allen (2019) dub their ‘institutional habitus’, and thus continue to largely benefit the already privileged while putting the upwardly mobile in a position that is both troubled and disadvantageous (Ashley, 2022; Khan, 2011). In fact, even when the upwardly mobile have been successful in career terms, they do not feel at ease with themselves or their work environments (Bourdieu, 2004; Friedman, 2016; Lubrano, 2005).
In such conditions, as a rising body of research indicates, the upwardly mobile are exposed to multiple forms of class mistreatment 1 within elite settings, and not just a lingering sociocultural mismatch associated with their relative lack of cultural and other relevant capitals (Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Lareau, 2015). In higher education, for instance, students from working-class backgrounds face exclusion from high-status activities (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013; Stuber, 2011), numerous forms of stigmatisation (Jack, 2016, 2019) and repeated ‘classist’ interactions (Langhout et al., 2007; Ferguson & Lareau, 2021). Moreover, across a range of high-status jobs, upwardly mobile professionals are regularly subjected to discrimination and stigma by more privileged co-workers or hierarchical superiors – often leaving them anxious and with an enfeebled sense of confidence (Ashley, 2022; see also Côté, 2011; Côté et al., 2021). 2 This research strongly suggests, although it does not yet prove, a connection between class mistreatment and lack of fit among the upwardly mobile.
Such class mistreatment is also gender-inflected. In selective universities, female students from working-class origins are more frequently exposed to shame than their male counterparts (Loveday, 2016). This lingers on within professional workplaces, where upwardly mobile women are more inclined to ‘disidentify’ (Skeggs, 1997) from their class origins to circumvent the stigma tied to a working-class identity (Friedman, 2022). Class mistreatment, too, is dependent on ethnicity. Ethnic minorities from working-class backgrounds experience heightened discomfort and stigmatisation at racialised elite universities (Bhopal & Myers, 2023; Park et al., 2019; Torres & Massey, 2012). This also extends to professional workplaces, where ethnic subgroups confront persistent marginalisation due to the pervading normalisation of what Puwar (2001, p. 652) terms the ‘somatic norm’ of the ‘white, male, upper/middle class body’ (see also Puwar, 2004; Watson, 1994).
Taken together, these different strands of scholarship point to the persistent, wide-ranging and intersecting forms of class mistreatment to which the upwardly mobile are exposed to within elite settings. However, despite the recognition that elite institutions are class-based fields (Ingram & Allen, 2019; Khan, 2011; Rivera, 2015), and that over-represented groups within them can engage in discriminatory and stigmatising behaviour towards under-represented groups (Ashley, 2022; Langhout et al., 2007; Reay, 2021), the bulk of this research is characterised by three important limitations. First, beyond pointing out the key role played by cultural capital (Flemmen et al., 2017; Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Lareau, 2015), there is a startling absence of attention to how class mistreatment and the lack of fit experienced by the upwardly mobile are connected in such settings, especially how the former may contribute to intensify the latter. Second, this research either studies class mistreatment in higher education or in professional workplaces, failing to fully grasp the continuity of class mistreatment within elite settings over time. Third, it focuses almost exclusively on a narrow number of societies in the Global North, particularly the United States and Britain, 3 which constrains our knowledge of class mistreatment from a broader global perspective.
In light of these limitations, how best to capture the class mistreatment experienced by the upwardly mobile within elite settings? One promising conceptual avenue, as I show throughout this article, lies in the work of Michèle Lamont. Lamont’s (1992) work posits that personal experience is embedded in social and symbolic frameworks. Building from this, Lamont (2000) highlights the importance of empirically mapping the symbolic forms of differentiation and hierarchisation, by which people separate social groups into ‘us’ and ‘them’. As part of this boundary work, Lamont et al. (2016), distinguish between ‘discrimination’ (i.e. being deprived of access to valuable resources) and ‘stigmatisation’ (i.e. being assigned a low status) to tackle the intersectional experience of mistreatment faced by ethno-racial minorities in the US, Israel and Brazil. In particular, to address stigmatisation, which is more salient, Lamont et al. (2016, pp. 6, 9. 18) coin the term ‘assaults on worth’ to refer to how disadvantaged minorities are variously stereotyped, underestimated, misunderstood and overlooked. Significantly, these mundane incidents shape not only disadvantaged groups’ sense of identity but also wider ‘recognition gaps’ (Lamont, 2018): disparities in worth and cultural membership. 4 Thus, complementing the Bourdieusian emphasis on the mismatch between habitus and field, and especially the critical mediating role of cultural capital (Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Lareau, 2015), this attention to discriminatory incidents and ‘assaults on worth’ opens new ground to explore how these incidents contribute to heighten lack of fit disadvantaged groups experience within elite institutions.
In this article, I demonstrate the heuristic value of this broader conceptual approach by examining how the upwardly mobile experience class mistreatment across both elite universities and workplaces in Chile. My findings not only prove the continuous, extensive, gendered and ethnically-inflected class mistreatment the upwardly mobile face in such elite settings, but also – and crucially – how this powerfully shapes their lack of sociocultural fit in those fields.
Outline of the research
This article draws from data collected from a larger research project on the experience of upward mobility in Chile. Pioneering ground for the implementation of neoliberal reforms since the mid-1970s (Fourcade & Babb, 2003), Chile features considerable economic growth (Edwards, 2023), a swift transition to a non-manual occupational structure (Atria, 2004) and a rapid massification of higher education (Salazar & Leihy, 2017) in recent decades. Yet, like most Latin American nations, Chile’s pattern of class mobility is typified by high fluidity between the middle and lower classes accompanied by strong barriers to mobility into the upper occupational echelons (Torche, 2005, 2014). In such conditions, upward mobility into elite positions is primarily restricted to the few attending the most selective universities: Universidad de Chile (UCH hereafter) and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC hereafter) (Villalobos et al., 2020). Still, even when holding prestigious academic credentials, i.e. ‘institutionalised cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986), the upwardly mobile face the impermeability of high-status professions – which are over-represented by individuals hailing from exclusive private schooling (Zimmerman, 2019a), men (UNDP, 2020) and the more direct offspring of European descent (UNDP, 2017).
Against this background, this article is based on 60 interviews with upwardly mobile individuals reaching high-status professions. This specific upward trajectory of interviewees was established using two variables: education and occupation. The class of origin was delimited by parents holding a (1) primary or secondary (but not a university) degree, and who (2) work(ed) in blue-collar or low-status white-collar jobs, or in the informal economy. The class of destination was delimited to men and women having a (1) university degree from UCH and PUC in medicine, law and engineering, the most prestigious professions in the country (UNDP, 2017); and (2) at least five years of work experience in those high-status professions. 5 The resulting sample was evenly allocated in terms of participants’ university training (30 from UCH, 30 from PUC), high-status professions (20 doctors, 20 lawyers, 20 engineers) and gender (30 male, 30 female). 6 The bulk of interviewees were in their thirties and forties, which means that most of them did their undergraduate studies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and transitioned to the labour market henceforth. 7 The majority work, or have worked in the past, at an elite workplace – typically a legal firm (for lawyers), a clinic (for doctors) or a corporation (for engineers) in the private sector (UNDP, 2017).
I used a particular interviewing technique: life-history interviews (Bertaux & Thompson, 1997). This allowed me to address interviewees’ own recollections and reflections about their long-range upward trajectories over time: from their family past and early childhood to their experience navigating elite universities and current professional careers. In this article, I chiefly focus on their experiences of class mistreatment faced at UCH and PUC and in their workplaces, particularly elite ones. Using Lamont et al.’s (2016) analytical distinction between discrimination and stigmatisation, as well as their notion of ‘assaults on worth’, this involved asking specific questions about their experience of class mistreatment in elite settings: the type and nature of their cross-class interactions, the incidents of class or gender discrimination and/or stigmatisation they themselves have experienced or witnessed, the specific forms of stigmatisation adopted in these incidents, and their reactions to or reflections on them. 8 These questions were consistently probed throughout the sample. 9
Interviews were conducted in Spanish between 2017 and 2018, lasted on average two-and-a-half hours, and were recorded and fully transcribed; more than half of them were conducted over more than one session. While interviewing, I repeatedly asked clarification questions via prompts and follow-up queries on the significance accorded to specific issues or incidents related to their experience of class mistreatment in elite settings, which primed common ground to build a rapport – indispensable for generating rich qualitative data (Fontana & Frey, 2005). In many cases, as I show below, this rapport allowed me to reach interviewees’ ‘meta-feelings’ (Pugh, 2013, p. 51): not only the immediate emotional response to incidents of class mistreatment but also the broader cultural frameworks which helped them to make sense to these challenging incidents. 10 Still, I am aware interviewees’ accounts reflect their perception of class mistreatment and not that of the perpetrators (I follow up this issue in the conclusions while noting other limitations of this study).
Analytically, I followed a data coding process in three stages. Initially, I read interview transcripts to inductively discern key emerging themes (e.g. interviewees’ sense of belonging at elite settings, types of cross-class interactions, forms of class mistreatment) across UCH and PUC and elite workplaces. Later on, I connected these emerging themes to Lamont et al.’s (2016) analytical distinction between discrimination and stigmatisation, particularly to the concept of ‘assaults on worth’. Finally, building from the above, I drew frequency counts on incidents of class mistreatment reported by interviewees, which allowed me to display patterns that emerged from the qualitative data considered as a whole (for a broader discussion of this approach, see Lamont et al., 2016, pp. 12–18, 300–310). This three-stage analytical procedure gradually allowed me to identify the key themes presented below – all of which crystallised as analytically fruitful across the data. 11
Findings
Class discrimination and assaults on worth in elite settings
Throughout our lengthy conversation about his mobility journey, Miguel, a law student at PUC in the early 2000s, recalls the ‘enormous cultural disadvantages’ he faced during his first years at university:
Everything I saw was out of my world. It would never have crossed my mind. . . The wealth, the books, the trips abroad, the opinions. . . Everyone had a formed opinion and came much better prepared intellectually. . . I had [fellow] students who went to Teatro Municipal [Santiago’s main opera house] and listened to classical music. . . It was a new world for me. . . a strange one. . . and nothing in my previous life had prepared me for that.
Miguel thus tellingly gives voice to how his arrival at PUC meant a sudden exposure to a ‘new world’ hitherto unbeknownst to him – one he experienced under the normative influence exerted by the class-based practices (e.g. expenditures of wealth, high-brow cultural practices, displays of academic competence) of the elites he encountered there. Like the vast majority of interviewees, Miguel’s exposure to this ‘strange’ world went hand in hand with his lack of fit at PUC. ‘I struggled a lot, it was so hard to integrate myself to [PUC], for a long time’, Miguel tells me. ‘I lowered a lot my academic performance. And it was really difficult to make new friends. . . I did not know how to, really’, he further notes. Echoing well-established findings, Miguel’s account expresses his strong feelings of not belonging, or sense of isolation, in his initial adjustment to PUC, particularly due to his relative lack of cultural, social and economic resources (e.g. Aries & Seider, 2005; Reay, 2021; Reay et al., 2009)
Significantly, though, Miguel did not only experience a general lack of fit, but he also ‘felt excluded’ at PUC. Eager to integrate himself more to campus life, Miguel became interested in university politics – a breeding ground for future politicians, particularly at elite universities (Jocelyn-Holt, 2015). Coming from a disadvantaged family with right-wing political leanings, he found the religious and traditionalist atmosphere at PUC congenial, and gradually involved himself with movimiento gremial – the conservative student movement founded by Jaime Guzmán in 1967, Pinochet’s main constitutional intellectual, and later giving rise to one of the strongest right-wing political parties in contemporary Chile (Valdivia, 2008). By the end of his first year, and despite his protracted sense of lack of fit, Miguel had emerged as one of the ‘visible faces’ of movimiento gremial in his cohort. He accordingly expected to be part of the student union at the Faculty of Law the coming year. However, his expectations were shattered by a senior student having a stronger influence in university politics and excluding Miguel from the role he wanted to play. Evoking this incident, Miguel says:
At one meeting, [name of senior student], he was the leader among gremialistas, just told me I could not join the list of candidates competing for running to the [law] student union and that other student was replacing me. . . Just like that. . . And without giving me any convincing reason for his decision.
For Miguel, this unsettling episode was ‘painful’ and represented a ‘great disappointment’. Looking back, he recognises that this senior student, educated at an elite private secondary school in Santiago, was part of a ‘small group of friends who have known each other since school and who make all the decisions’. After a pause, he adds, musing in retrospect: ‘I do not blame them. . . They just chose the people that they knew from school, in a way a closest or safest choice, from their perspective’, he further notes. ‘But I felt excluded’, Miguel nonetheless records. While Miguel makes an effort to understand the rationale of his privileged peers’ decision, this incident – which revealed to him ‘a very big inconsistency between the principles, which I shared, and the practice, which I could not accept’ – strongly influenced his own decision to leave movimiento gremial. Importantly, this exclusionary incident, triggering later on a form of self-exclusion for Miguel, illustrates a form of class-based discrimination (i.e. being deprived to the access to a valuable resource) which contributed to heighten Miguel’s lack of fit at PUC.
However, although the experience of class discrimination of this type is significant across interviewees, much more prevalent are incidents of class stigmatisation (see Table 1). Compared to PUC, UCH, a state and secular university, is usually described as an elite institution that is more open to undergraduates from diverse social backgrounds (Jocelyn-Holt, 2015; though, see Iglesias et al., 2013). Pedro, who grew up a in a highly deprived family living in a small provincial town in Chile’s Central Valley, unambiguously disagrees. During his first semester at UCH, Pedro, close to left-wing political views and with literary inclinations, sought friendships among the ‘leftist people’ from privileged backgrounds predominating at the Faculty of Law. After participating in a few social activities with them and partly sharing his background, Pedro found out that his ‘progressive’ friends had organised a ‘public collection of funds’ for him without his knowledge or consent and disclosed his identity. This situation wounded Pedro deeply: ‘I did not want their pity’, he clarifies, ‘nor to be relegated or stigmatised’. Pedro firmly rejects the ‘social tourism’ of his privileged peers:
I did not come to ask anything from anyone. I came to do my things because I wanted to be better than the context I had live before. I did not come to have their pity, or receive funds raised by people who discovered the existence of misery in books. I detest that form of turismo social [social tourism]. . . I rather prefer cagar meando solo [Chilean expression with strong connotations; it can be approximately translated as ‘to be fucked-up on my own’].
This unauthorised exposure of Pedro’s background, even if there was no explicit intention of harming him, was not only a break of the trust in fellow students he had initially considered friends, but also a form of stigmatisation that led him to being stereotyped as poor, or in need of assistance. When I asked Pedro about the reasons behind this incident, he avoided further details but grimly said: ‘the School [of Law at UCH] is classist, elitist’. After this distressing experience, Pedro severed all relations with these former friends. As maintaining prior relationships from his provincial town – either with family or friends from secondary school – was difficult while studying in Santiago, all this amplified Pedro’s sense of isolation beyond his general sense of lack of fit at UCH.
Type and prevalence of class mistreatment at UCH and PUC.
Note: Percentages calculated on the basis of the type of class mistreatment reported by each interviewee, which include at least one instance of class mistreatment. aClass discrimination includes overt or blatant expressions of class mistreatment, which are primarily concerned with ways of preventing or depriving access to opportunities and/or resources due to their class background. bClass stigmatisation includes a wider range of phenomena beyond opportunities and resources, such as being misunderstood, overlooked, underestimated or stereotyped (analytical distinction taken from Lamont et al., 2016, p. 18). The same indications apply for Table 2.
Pedro’s incident is one of the many expressions of class mistreatment that interviewees faced at UCH and PUC – one exerted by friends (Ferguson & Lareau, 2021). But class stigmatisation was also practised by mere acquaintances or even strangers in more indirect ways. Diego, a student of engineering at PUC, who previously studied at a low-performing provincial state school, recalls how his privileged peers at university regularly made derogatory comments about ‘flaites’ – a term alluding to young people from lower-class backgrounds characterised by a defiant attitude towards authority and showy consumption – coming from low-status state schools. ‘They did not know I had studied in a state school, but I remember [over]hearing these and other comments frequently’, he recounts. Unlike Pedro, these scornful remarks did not target Diego directly, but left a potent imprint on him nonetheless. Indeed, feeling intimidated while overhearing these hostile remarks, he camouflaged his secondary school training to avoid stigmatisation from his peers (Granfield, 1991). However, this identity concealment did not serve him to fit in more at PUC: ‘I avoided making friends because I did not want to lie about my life’, he explains. Much like Pedro, this increased Diego’s initial sense of solitariness and general maladjustment at PUC.
As Table 1 shows, incidents of this type – being directly or indirectly stigmatised because of their class origins – are the most frequently reported by interviewees, both at UCH and PUC. These incidents of class mistreatment can be analysed through the lens of ‘assaults on worth’ (Lamont et al., 2016): events in which interviewees’ sense of self and identity is variously tested by being stereotyped, undervalued or misinterpreted across class lines. As such, they not only testify to the emotional costs tied to upwardly mobility (Friedman, 2016) but also show how they reinforce the lack of fit faced by the upwardly mobile at elite institutions.
Importantly, too, these forms of class mistreatment, including both discrimination and stigmatisation, linger on within elite workplaces. Rosa, a lawyer trained at PUC and now working at an exclusive legal firm in one of Santiago’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, exemplifies this. Almost a decade before our interview, upon completing her university training, Rosa was offered a very junior position in this ‘boutique’ legal company. Initially, Rosa felt appreciated by her male boss, who advocated on her behalf and gave her valuable work. Yet, as time went on, her salary did not increase accordingly and remained lower than her more privileged colleagues with similar academic credentials and seniority. For a long time, Rosa felt reluctant to ask for a pay increase, a common disposition among the upwardly mobile (Macmillan et al., 2014), even if she considered that her lower salary was an ‘unfair’ discrimination. ‘It was unfair because I worked as much as everyone else, or more, but there was no reward for that and I did not have the confidence to ask for a pay rise’, she says.
Yet what Rosa finds even more disturbing is her ongoing sense of ‘discomfort’ and ‘awkwardness’ she feels at her workplace. This stubborn feeling resurfaces almost daily on the topics of conversation held by her wealthy colleagues: expensive holidays abroad, skiing with their children during the winter break, or going to fashionable restaurants. All these social practices among Rosa’s affluent co-workers seem to faithfully represent different forms of ‘distinction’ in Bourdieu’s (1984) sense of the word: a smartness made possible by what is exclusive. ‘I remain silent’, Rosa tells me. ‘I cannot relate to that, I just cannot’, she emphatically comments. Notably, Rosa’s lack of fit at her work has not only been shaped by this uneasiness and sense of lack of entitlement (Côté et al., 2021) or insufficient cultural capital (Flemmen et al., 2017; Friedman & Laurison, 2019) regarding her co-workers’ exclusive lifestyles, but also by specific ‘remarks’ inadvertently targeting her own class background. She finds particularly vexing the belittling comments occasionally made by her colleagues about the cleaning personnel:
They just make these ignorant, stupid remarks about them [the cleaning personnel]. . . That they are lazy or do not work hard enough [. . .] They do not know it, but in my own family there are people. . . my mother, my aunties who have worked at some point as cleaning ladies. . . So their comments also make me feel constantly out of place here.
Rosa’s story shows how both class discrimination and stigmatisation can go together in elite workplaces, although the latter are much more frequent and salient (see Table 2). In this regard, much like Diego, Rosa felt indirectly stigmatised by overhearing the pejorative remarks made by her privileged colleagues. For Rosa and most interviewees, repeated class-based ‘assaults on worth’ (Lamont et al., 2016) like these play a significant part in shaping, indeed heightening, the persistent lack of fit the upwardly mobile experience in elite workplaces (feeling ‘constantly out of place’), undermining both their sense of belonging to elite environments and sense of self-worth within them. As such, they highlight the continuity of class mistreatment across selective universities and professional workplaces, especially in those in which the elites prevail.
Type and prevalence of class mistreatment in work settings by high-status occupation.
The gender-inflected weight of class mistreatment
For female interviewees, the persistence of this class mistreatment often went hand in hand with gendered disadvantages. During the final years of her medical training at UCH, in 2011, Carmen attended a seminar on traumatology – a medical specialty ‘dominated by men’, she tells me. On one occasion, Carmen, the only female undergraduate taking this small-size specialisation course, was the only student attending it. The professor in charge arrived at the classroom, but when he saw that Carmen was the only student present, he left the classroom without providing any justification. Some minutes later, the professor’s secretary appeared in the classroom and told Carmen that the professor would not give the seminar as she was the only student present. ‘His secretary did not mention that this was because of my gender’, Carmen recounts. ‘But the fact remained that this professor did not give the seminar and I was la única estudiante [the only female student] there’, she further observes. Carmen makes sure to convey to me that this incident was ‘a discrimination’. This was not only because Carmen never heard something like this happen to any male fellow student, but also because that attitude prevented her accessing a seminar (i.e. a valuable resource for her training) that she was officially entitled to as an enrolled student.
However, although incidents of gender discrimination of this kind were fairly frequent, they do not constitute the most prevalent form of gender mistreatment at UCH and PUC (see Table 3). By and large, the most common forms of gender mistreatment were connected to gender stigmatisation. This was particularly strong in engineering, the quintessential male profession. ‘Everything revolved around men’, Francisca, a student at UCH in the early 1990s, observes, referring both to the student body and to the faculty. Being underestimated because of ‘being a woman’ was experienced daily. For example, Francisca still vividly recalls an incident she faced during her first years at the Faculty of Engineering, almost 30 years ago:
Type of gender mistreatment at UCH and PUC.
Note: Type of gender mistreatment reported by each interviewee, which includes at least one instance of gender mistreatment. aGender discrimination includes overt or blatant expressions of gender mistreatment, which are concerned with ways of preventing or depriving access to opportunities and/or resources because of being female. bGender stigmatisation refers to phenomena such as being misunderstood, overlooked, underestimated or stereotyped (analytical distinction taken from Lamont et al., 2016, p. 18). The same indications apply to Table 4.
I remember approaching a group of men who were talking about politics but then suddenly changed the topic when I joined them. . . I stayed there and I told them that I was interested in discussing politics with them. . . And they simply laughed at me. . . They did not say anything, just laughed at me and stopped the conversation.
Routine belittling comments like these were widespread for female interviewees. Yet this type of assaults on worth also coexisted with being ignored, or looked over, because of their gender and class background. This was one of the salient points in our conversation with Catherine, another student of Law at PUC. Like Pedro, Catherine felt intense loneliness during her first years at university. With few friends but still eager to integrate herself more with her peers, Catherine decided to join the ‘trabajos voluntarios’ (volunteering activities) organised by students for the winter break. Initially, she thought this was a great opportunity to engage with helping poor people in the northern regions of the country while getting to know other students. But the dynamics structuring the social life of her privileged peers was highly unfamiliar for her: ‘I tried my best to be friendly, but I could not fit in’, she tells me. ‘They all knew each other from their schools and spoke about people they knew. . . I felt they were completely indifferent to my existence. I was invisible for them’, Catherine further, and forcefully, conveys. Unlike Pedro’s incident at UCH, in which he was stigmatised by being publicly stereotyped as a student from a disadvantaged background, Catherine’s underlines the indifference and invisibility she lived through in her cross-class interactions with her privileged peers. For female interviewees, this was not uncommon. Much like Catherine, Rosa, whom we have encountered earlier, also struggled with solitariness at PUC. But as time went on, this somewhat changed once she started to obtain good marks. ‘I started to stand out from the second year onwards’, she remarks. ‘And suddenly the cuicos [posh students] started to pescarme [take notice of her], ask for my notes and my approach to studying.’ And, after a pause, Rosa emphatically tells me: ‘Only then they found out I existed’.
Both Catherine’s and Rosa’s experiences reveal not so much the tendency to conceal their class origins (Friedman, 2022; Loveday, 2016), but rather point to a different variant of ‘assaults on worth’ (Lamont et al., 2016): those related with the lack of attention or neglect rather than stereotyping or aggression. Notably, these experiences of neglect uncover a particular form of class mistreatment that upwardly mobile women face in such elite settings – and one that deepened their lack of fit. Indeed, the ten days Catherine spent in volunteering represented for her ‘what is at the heart of the PUC’. In fact, referring to this specific incident, Catherine gives voice to a larger sense of misrecognition (Lamont, 2018) that she felt throughout her undergraduate studies: ‘it was simply not my place’, she asserts.
The combined impact of class and gender stigmatisation continued in the workplace. Sofía, an engineer trained at UCH and now working at a top management position in an electric company, offers a good illustration. In particular, Sofia recalls one specific incident:
Some years ago, I was in this management position, and we had some other top managers coming from Peru for an important meeting. . . When they arrived to our offices, I came to greet them, as I was in charge of leading that meeting. . . But they all thought that I was the secretary. . .
Sofía admits this episode ‘was really awkward’ and undermined, at least for a while, her sense of being a competent worker at a job over-represented by men (Puwar, 2004). Incidents of this type are frequent across interviewees, though they vary by high-status professions (see Table 4).
Type and prevalence of gender mistreatment in workplaces.
In exclusive law firms, for example, gender and class disadvantage adopted even more insidious expressions. Rosa, the lawyer we met earlier, provides a telling case in point. As already indicated, Rosa struggled many years to ask for a pay rise, even if she considered that her lower salary was an ‘unfair’ discrimination – a stiff income penalty detrimentally affecting women professionals in Chile (UNDP, 2020), particularly among top income earners (Zimmerman, 2019b). Against this backdrop, when Rosa finally found the confidence to ask for a pay rise, her male boss refused it categorically, and dismissively added: ‘It is not my fault that you spend your money on your parents, while your colleagues do it on their wardrobes.’ With her voice cracking from struggling to keep her tears back, Rosa admits this incident ‘hurt me a lot’. Her boss’s cavalier rejection was a clear reminder of Rosa’s class difference with respect to the rest of her privileged colleagues: while she needs the money to support her parents, her co-workers spend it ‘on their wardrobes’. Importantly, Rosa deems this incident as ‘classist’ and ‘sexist’, bringing explicitly together for her both class and gender mistreatment. Wounded and bewildered, Rosa accepted her boss’s refusal and kept going, chiefly because she in effect needed the money to support her ageing parents – like most upwardly mobile individuals in Chile (Fercovic, 2025) – and could not afford to lose her only source of income.
The ever-present but elusive role of ethnicity
Ethnicity, too, emerged as a relevant issue for interviewees when navigating elite settings. Carmen, the doctor trained at UCH we encountered earlier, was potently struck by the segregation among students at the Faculty of Medicine. Within the classroom, she vividly recalls, students were ‘distributed’ according to their ‘social class’. Revealingly, ‘there were those with scholarships’, like herself, the ‘people from the provinces’, and a characteristic ‘blond spot [with strong emphasis in her voice]’ – the term Carmen uses to refer to her affluent peers, underscoring their characteristic ‘blond’ bodily appearance – which persisted over the years.
Indeed, for Estefanía, another doctor trained at UCH and now working part-time at a clinic belonging to one of the most conservative Catholic groups in Chile, class and ethnicity – particularly salient in terms of skin colour – are inseparable. When I ask Estefanía about her own experience of class mistreatment in her workplace, she replies:
At [name of the clinic] there is discrimination. . . Everything revolves around the religion doctors profess and who attends the mass at the chapel [located within the clinic]. . . the blond, tall, well-groomed, devout doctors. . . Those who run the place belong to the same social circles, the same networks [. . .] If you are a competent, professional, good doctor, as I believe I am, you can work here, but you are not going to get the most coveted positions. . . You are going to face obstacles. . . I have been here for many years, and it has not happened to me and for other doctors like me. . . That is the reality, even if people in charge here would not admit it [. . .] That often makes me feel I do not belong.
In her account, Estefanía explicitly brings together class (‘same social circles, the same networks’) and ethnicity (‘the blonde, tall, well-groomed, devout doctors’) to explain the existing ‘discrimination’ she has experienced at her work, stressing how both are closely intertwined in everyday cross-class interactions at elite institutions (Rodríguez & Archer, 2022). Importantly, too, Estefanía acknowledges this plays a considerable role in increasing her sense of lack of fit.
However, unlike the link between class and gender, Estefanía does not report specific incidents openly involving direct racial discrimination or stigmatisation, though she – much like Carmen – recognises the ubiquitous presence of ethnicity in moulding cross-class encounters in elite settings. This ever-present yet elusive role of ethnicity is also recognised by Matías, a lawyer trained at PUC in the early 2000s. When explaining his initial adjustment at the Faculty of Law, he forthrightly acknowledges his privileged peers’ ‘physical appearance’ as a fundamental trait setting them apart. But when I enquire further about this, Matías cannot provide any single example of ethno-racial discrimination or stigmatisation he himself experienced, or witnessed, at PUC or later on in his work as a professional lawyer in the private sector for more than a decade now. Like him, no other interviewee reports such type of incidents, either at university or in the workplace. Tellingly, Matías reflects on this issue in the following terms:
Everyone knows that class differences in this country are connected to racial differences. But people deny this, because they think somehow that everyone is white, or wants to believe they are, even if this is false [. . .] I think [in Chile] it is easier to rotear a alguien [devalue somebody for his low social background], save if the person targeted is clearly Mapuche [Chile’s indigenous population], in which case it would be [called] un indio [an Indian, with pejorative connotations]. . . But there are not many Mapuche at PUC, nor many Mapuche lawyers.
Matías’s account is significant for two reasons. First, it points to a common race denial in Chile: although the Chilean population is mixed-race, the majority self-identify as white (Telles & Flores, 2013). Against this peculiar backdrop, devoid of a consistent public discourse on race, expressions of class contempt (‘rotear a alguien’) are more prominent than racial slurs (UNDP, 2017), as Matías himself underlines. Second, Matías’s explanation confirms the dramatic under-representation of the indigenous population within Chile’s most prestigious professions – medicine, law and engineering (UNDP, 2017). In such professions, as Matías highlights, there are not ‘many Mapuche’.
Conclusions
In this article, I have contributed to broaden the geographical scope of existing research on class inequality and upward mobility by examining how the upwardly mobile experience class mistreatment within elite settings in Chilean society. Against a backdrop of acute income/wealth concentration at the top and limited opportunities for upward mobility into elite positions (UNDP, 2017), I have shown how the upwardly mobile experience a continuous, recurrent and extensive range of class mistreatment across selective universities and professional workplaces. Crucially, importing the conceptual tools advanced by studies of ethno-racial exclusion (Lamont et al., 2016), I have shown how such class mistreatment, also inflected by gender and ethnicity, plays a key part in shaping the lack of sociocultural fit the upwardly mobile experience in those elite fields.
This work holds a number of implications for the growing literature focusing on elite settings, upward mobility and class mistreatment. First and foremost, it foregrounds the continuity of the class mistreatment the upwardly mobile face across selective universities and professional workplaces. In other words, this study shows how the ‘long shadow’ (Lareau, 2015) of class mistreatment remains relevant after mobility has begun or cemented. Thus, even the upwardly mobile holding prestigious academic credentials – i.e. ‘institutionalised cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986) – do not seem to gain significant protective benefits, or buffers, from a class mistreatment which heightens their lack of fit (see, however, Fercovic, 2023). This finding may contribute to explain why upward trajectories into elite positions is a goal that not everyone necessarily aspires to (Friedman, 2016). But this finding also raises the broader question about the role of elite organisational cultures – or what Ingram and Allen (2019) call their ‘institutional habitus’ – in not just reproducing but also exacerbating the impact of class inequality on disadvantaged minorities over time (Ashley, 2022; Ashley et al., 2023; Rivera, 2015).
Second, this study also reveals the wide-ranging extent of class mistreatment within elite settings. In addition to facing discriminatory incidents, the upwardly mobile are regularly stereotyped, underestimated, misunderstood and overlooked. Empirically mapping these multiple ‘assaults on worth’ (Lamont et al., 2016) matters not only because they underline the variegated emotional costs (Friedman, 2016) tied to class mistreatment, but also because the persistent lack of fit the upwardly mobile face within elite settings is moulded by broader ‘recognition gaps’ (Lamont, 2018) across cross-class interactions: a denied cultural membership and a devalued sense of self-worth. Importantly, the high prevalence of assaults on worth in the Chilean context suggests that issues of recognition are at least as relevant as lacking critical resources (cultural and other forms of capital) for successfully accessing and navigating elite settings (Flemmen et al., 2017; Friedman & Laurison, 2019; Lareau, 2015). Thus, both class mistreatment and the relative dearth of such resources contribute to create and sustain over time the persistent lack of sociocultural fit the upwardly mobile experience within elite settings.
Third, this study confirms but also casts new light on the connection between class mistreatment and gender. Unlike their male counterparts, female interviewees convey specific forms of gender discrimination (e.g. rejection of a pay rise) and stigmatisation (e.g. stereotyping, belittling and neglect), and a much higher prevalence of these latter incidents. Yet findings also uncover that female interviewees experience, particularly those studying law at PUC, a specific variant of ‘assaults on worth’ more frequently: those related to neglect rather than aggression. This finding may reflect the particular weight the ‘somatic norm’ of the ‘white, male, upper/middle class body’ (Puwar, 2001) at that specific elite institution, heightening the invisibility reported by upwardly mobile women. But my study cannot rule out the possibility that this finding can also express their tendency to conceal their class origins in order to avoid stigmatisation (Friedman, 2022; Loveday, 2016). Further research is needed in this regard.
Fourth, this work similarly sheds light on the link between class mistreatment and ethnicity. Significantly, while interviewees recognise the ever-present force of ethnicity in shaping their cross-class encounters in elite settings, they do not report incidents straightforwardly involving ethnic/racial discrimination or stigmatisation. This may reflect a common racial disavowal in Chile: although Chileans, like most Latin Americans, are mixed-race, the majority continues to self-identify as white (Telles & Flores, 2013) – in marked contrast to what happens in Brazil, where the theme of ‘racial democracy’ plays a central part in the national culture (Lamont et al., 2016). This is a prescient reminder that ethnicity is highly context-dependent, and future research should view it as such. But, more specifically, this finding can also manifest the relevant yet ambiguous enactment of whiteness within elite settings in Chile (Rodríguez & Archer, 2022), as well as the staggering under-representation of ethnic minorities within the most prestigious professions in the country (UNDP, 2017).
These findings demonstrate the need for adopting a stronger, and more situated, intersectional approach in the study of upward mobility, elite positions and class mistreatment. Indeed, understanding the way inequalities interact to the detriment of people from disadvantaged origins at demographic intersections is pivotal to further unravelling the institutional and interactional drivers of class mistreatment in elite settings. Acknowledging this is relevant because intersectional effects – combinations of class, gender and racial identities – are not just additive but rather crystallise in particular attributions and expectations (Dill et al., 2007). This broader intersectional approach is consistent with Bourdieu’s (1984, 1989, 2004) view of habitus as a product of the overall life experience and not just discrete incidents related to class mistreatment. Recent research has been moving in this direction (e.g. Ashley, 2022; Friedman & Laurison, 2019), although still remains largely focused on higher education.
Finally, this study has some noteworthy limitations which point to avenues for future research. First, although I focused on three distinctive high-status professions (medicine, law and engineering), this study could not provide a consistent comparison of these professions in the labour market. Pursuing comparative case studies in elite occupational fields (e.g. Friedman & Laurison, 2019), future research might further identify and probe how distinct professional cultures and class mistreatment adversely affect the upwardly mobile. Second, this study did not observe direct behaviour tied to class mistreatment within elite settings. Future studies may attempt to offset this limitation by examining the perspective of the dominant groups in elite settings in a complementary fashion. Lastly, I cannot rule out the possibility of distortion in the reports offered by the upwardly mobile; in this regard, future research may offer additional confirmation, or challenge, their views.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Anthony Miro Born, Fiona Gogescu, Héctor Ríos, Rebecca Wetter, the Sociological Review editorial team and two anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. The article also benefited from comments received at the 2024 Workshop on ‘Élites, educación y reproducción social’, organised by Cristóbal Villalobos and Juan Pablo Venables at Universidad Austral, Valdivia, Chile. Any remaining errors are my own.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Becas-Chile 72170346 and Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social COES ANID/FONDAP/15130009.
