Organisational social mobility programmes as mechanisms of power and control

Successive UK governments have blamed poor rates of relative social mobility on the tendency of elite occupations to exclude according to social class. Organisational programmes implemented in response aim to identify talented young people from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, help them identify as ‘legitimate’ professionals, and equip them with relevant knowledge and skills. Based on interviews with 35 participants in one programme and drawing on Foucauldian perspectives on governmentality and disciplinary power, the current study explores how these programmes may reproduce inequalities rather than challenge the status quo. It shows how a dominant discourse of merit invites participants to adopt a subject position that conforms with an idealised professional identity and how they shape their conduct in response. The core contribution is to suggest that social mobility initiatives framed by organisations as mechanisms to empower disadvantaged young people, might be read as expressions of neo-liberal governmentality, unequal power and corporate control.