Abstract

Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred interviews were conducted with final-year undergraduates from three different class fractions at a Russell Group university (n = 50) and a Post-1992 university (n = 50) in England. This research design enabled the exploration of differences between the most socio-economically privileged students and others, independent of university attended. The findings demonstrated how upper-middle-class students at both universities were better able to mobilise family resources to progressively ‘stack’ multiple and ‘high-status’ internships, resultantly pulling away from their peers in preparing for the graduate labour market. It is argued that internships have emerged as a class strategy to ‘get ahead’ beyond the well-established mechanisms of elite universities and prestigious fields of study.

摘要

在日益拥挤的毕业生劳动力市场上，实习已成为提高职业前景的重要手段。本文使用位置冲突理论来探索来自不同社会阶层背景的大学生如何体验实习，以及对毕业后就业中的不平等的影响。在英格兰的罗素集团大学（n = 50）和1992年后大学（n = 50）对来自三个不同班级的期末本科生进行了一百次面试。这项研究设计使人们能够探索社会经济上最有特权的学生与其他人之间的差异，而这些人与大学无关。调查结果表明，两所大学的中产阶级学生如何更好地调动家庭资源来逐步“堆叠”多种和“高地位”实习，从而在准备毕业生劳动力市场时脱离了同龄人。有人认为，实习已经成为一种阶级策略，可以“超越”精英大学和著名的研究领域的既定机制。