Social class in 21st century Britain

Great Britain has always possessed a rigid class structure with few chances for upward mobility. However, in modern times, class structure has received a new face-lift. Instead of the traditional three tiered social class structure, instead is in place a seven tiered class structure that has various ways to measure class that include social, cultural, and economical. Therefore, class within British society, is not just categorized through how much money a person has, but also how socially and culturally active they are. Still, there is some debate to whether or not class plays an important role in British society as much as it did in the past. Evidence suggest it does and the more money and influence a person has in society, the more likely they will do well and receive more opportunities, therefore removing the notion that class does not have much of an impact on a person's future.

Going back to the modern class structure, the UK, Great Britain specifically, has various social classes, seven to be exact. In fact, only about 39% of people in Britain fit the traditional social classes of upper class, middle, and working class. The classes, British social structure splits into several distinct labels with the elite being at the top and the lowest class termed precariat. Precariat means precarious, poor, proletariat. When looking deeper into the seven classes it is important to note how the distinctions are made, in terms of categorizing people into them.

Elite, as mentioned prior, has the highest social standing in the Britain. People in the elite class have the most wealth and has the greatest levels of all three capitals. The class before that, the second group with the most wealth, is the established middle class. This scores highly on the three capitals and is the biggest and most sociable class group, with high scores in cultural capital. Below this class is the technical middle class. This class is a one of a few new classes that are small in number; score high in terms of money, but low for cultural and social capital. The people in this class are social isolationists and possess cultural apathy.

The class below this are new affluent workers. This is a young class group that are both culturally and socially active with average levels of monetary capital. The class below this is traditional working class. This social group scores low on every form of capital, however it not entirely deprived. They have moderately high property worth. The emergent service workers fall below this social class and score low in economic capital with score high in cultural and social capital. The lowest class, precariat, score low on all capitals and are the poorest, with the highest levels of deprivation.

These classes although not solely based on job title and income level, are still limiting in terms of people within these classes acquiring future opportunities and quality education. Still there is not enough resource in this field to gain appropriate conclusions. "To gain clarity on causes of and barriers to reducing social inequalities in health, social epidemiologists will need to generate improved theoretical frameworks and the necessary data to test and refine them" (Krieger, 2001, p. 30). In an article by Stephen, Markus and Fryberg, the authors discuss the sociocultural self-model. First, the sociocultural self-model hypothesizes distinct characteristics (i.e., talents) and organizational conditions (i.e., right to use resources) as symbiotic forces that reciprocally establish each other and that are greatest comprehended together. "Second, the sociocultural self-model recognizes that both individual characteristics and structural conditions indirectly influence behavior through the selves that emerge in the situation" (Stephens, Markus and Fryberg, 2012, p. 723). When using this lens to analyze class structure, it suggests that talents alone cannot allow a person movement through classes, but rather inclusion of structural conditions.

Another article examined six different topics when it came to understanding social class and structure. "(a) gender, time, and the division of labor in the home; (b) paid work: too much or too little; (c) maternal employment and child outcomes; (d) work-family conflict; (e) work, family, stress, and health; and (f) work-family policy" (Bianchi and Milkie, 2010, p. 705). These topics of research put into perspective the effect of class still existent in Britain. Although people are not just measured on income alone, there are various things considered that limit a person's appeal in society as well as limit their overall choices in British society. For example, the counterarguments of MMI or Maximally Maintained Inequality plus EMI or Effectively Maintained Inequality, in divergence, argue that educational disproportions tend to continue regardless of expansion for the reason that those from more privileged social class upbringings are placed into better schools because they have better opportunity to do so. "…better placed to take up the new educational opportunities that expansion affords (MMI) and to secure for themselves qualitatively better kinds of education at any given level (EMI)" (Boliver, 2010, p. 229).

Karl Marx discussed modern society and the fact that class antagonisms have not gone away even with the revamping of class structure. "The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms" (Marx et al., 1998, p. 62). Marx goes on to contend that the new classes established society structured with new forms of struggle and conditions of oppression to replace the old ones. The new class and social structure thus is attached to new albeit, the same limiting conditions as previous social class structures. "Thus social class was derived from the assumed social status of each occupation…general standing in the community, irrespective of the rate of remuneration" (Royle, 2012, p. 106). Essentially what this means is, after 1911, in Britain, white collar or jobs reflecting a mental labor status, people considered "higher status" than those jobs that were physical and required no real skill.

People can argue that class structure is merely just that, a structure, but in reality, it is more confining than that. In America, where class structure is based on income, upward mobility is more possible. In Britain, there are various stereotypes and associations assigned to each class, which continue to exist today. So even though class is defined in Britain and the UK based on activity both in culture and sociability, not just on income, it is also based on job title as well as previous family background. People in Britain care about the background of individuals. Family background is something still deeply embedded into British society.