The british working class : identity(-ies), representations, (re)definition

Résumé

It is commonplace in certain quarters to posit that the British working class has virtually disappeared because of the collapse of manufacturing in the last decades of the 20th century. However, it is hardly plausible that there should be nothing left today of a social group that was conspicuous in the past owing both to its deep involvement in the economy and its palpable presence in the urban environment. As a matter of fact, not only has the working class been of interest to film-makers, singers, cartoonists, etc., over the last half century or so, but a majority of 21st-century Britons still consider themselves to be “working-class” while many eke out a living by performing tiring, repetitive, low-skilled and poorly-paid tasks, i.e. tasks typical of those carried out by workers in the past. This issue of Cycnos, therefore, aims at showing that the aforementioned verdict probably fails to take into consideration a number of critical questions that range from the notion of representation to that of permanence (whether physical or otherwise).