Discussions around social mobility have increasingly gained traction in both political and academic circles in the last two decades. The current, established conceptualisation of social mobility reduces ‘success’ down to individual level of educational achievement, occupational position and income, focusing on the successful few who rise up and move out. For many in working-class communities, this discourse is undesirable or antithetical to everyday life. Drawing upon 13 interviews with 9 families collected as part of an ethnographic study, this article asks, ‘how were social (im)mobility narratives and notions of value constructed by residents of one working-class community?’ Its findings highlight how alternative narratives of social (im)mobility were constructed; emphasising the value of fixity, anchorage, and relationality. Three key techniques were used by participants when constructing social (im)mobility narratives: the born and bred narrative; distancing from education as a route to mobility; and the construction of a distinct working-class discourse of fulfilment. Participants highlighted the value of anchorage to place and kinship, where fulfilment results from finding ontological security. The findings demonstrate that residents of a working-class community constructed alternative social mobility narratives using a relational selfhood model that held local value. This article makes important contributions to the theorisation of social mobility in which it might be understood as a collective rather than individual endeavour, improving entire communities that seek ontological security instead of social class movement and dislocation.

在过去的二十年中，关于社会流动性的讨论在政治和学术界越来越受到关注。当前已确立的社会流动概念将“成功”降低到个人的教育成就，职业地位和收入水平，集中于成功的少数人升迁。对于许多工人阶级社区而言，这种话语是日常生活中不可取或与之相反的。根据一项人种学研究的一部分，对9个家庭进行了13次访谈，本文提出了疑问：“一个工人阶级社区的居民如何构建社会（不流动）流动的叙述和价值观念？” 它的发现强调了如何构建社会（不流动）叙事的替代性叙述。强调固定性，固定性和关系性的价值。参与者在构建社交（行动）叙事时使用了三种关键技术：出生和繁殖的叙事；远离教育，这是通往出行的途径；并构建了一个独特的工人阶级成就理论。与会者强调了锚定对场所和亲属关系的价值，在这种情况下，实现是由于找到本体论安全性而产生的。研究结果表明，工人阶级社区的居民使用具有地方价值的关系性自我模式构建了替代性的社会流动性叙述。本文为社会流动的理论化做出了重要贡献，在理论上可以将其理解为集体而不是个人的努力，从而改善了寻求本体论安全而不是社会阶级运动和社会错位的整个社区。