Source : the age
I’ll never forget the feeling of awe – and acute discomfort – the first time I walked into The Age’s newsroom.
I was 22 and, for as long as I could remember, had wanted to work with the big (news) wigs in town. After two blissful and terrifying weeks working my butt off, I was asked to stay for another (I readily agreed), and eventually landed a permanent job.
Though having grown up in a working-class home, Caroline Zielinski is now in the middle class.Credit: Getty Images
Little did I know how much coming in as an employee, and no longer an intern, would make me feel like a fish out of water. Yes, I had a degree from one of Australia’s best universities, but I was still living in an outer western suburb, which felt like a world away.
Conversations revolved around the inner north and south, with high-profile journalists I’d read for years talking about their weekends at book readings and music festivals, dining at new restaurants or checking out museums. Unlike most media professionals, I don’t come from an English-speaking background, and while my working-class Polish roots have equipped me to fight and never give up, they didn’t expose me to the world of theatre, musicals, overseas travel and multicultural cuisines.
While in some ways this was my dream life, it still felt out of reach because I was a class migrant.
In an article for The Conversation, UK researchers Dr Madeline Wyatt and Samantha Evans found that people who experience social mobility through education often “felt under pressure to change mannerisms, adjust their accents and conceal behavioural habits to fit into a workplace”. As one participant in their 2022 study said: “The [work] culture is very middle class, where it might be that you can quote Latin, that you drink wine rather than beer, that you socialise in a certain way.”
This kind of social mobility also tends to affect family dynamics. In Australia, we like to pretend that class doesn’t exist or, at the very least, matter all that much. But as Dr Alexandra Coleman from the University of Western Sydney points out, education has become a dominant hope for a good life. Take, for example, riot police recently being called to manage unruly crowds at Sydney’s Canterbury Racecourse, where selective school exams were being held, and unruly parents jostled for their children to enter the test and, by extension, a better life.
While I have learnt to “pass”, the natural trappings of wealth and comfort are easy for us outsiders to recognise if you know the signs. I once dated a guy whose dinner table guests included famous playwrights and political figures, and who asked me, “Three prime ministers came out of my school. How many came out of yours?”
But while I now better fit in to some spaces, this mobility has created a gap with my parents that is difficult to fill. To them, the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a decadent meal out is mortifying.
Dr Jill Sheppard, a politics and international relations lecturer at the Australian National University, understands what I am talking about. She, too, has “surpassed” her standing in life, and finds the chasm left by education and the doors it opens.
“Cultural capital is like a cheat code for making money, but plenty of people have it without seeing financial rewards. To parents who value economic security, seeing their kids “waste” money on fine dining or art can be frustrating,” Sheppard says.
And while many working-class parents strive for their children to achieve financial security, they don’t always anticipate that this journey can also involve acquiring cultural capital or embracing different lifestyle choices or politics. This often results in tension when children pursue careers or lifestyles that are culturally rich but financially unstable, like the arts.
“It must feel like migrating for a second time,” Sheppard says. “Your children are now in a different part of society that [you] don’t feel comfortable in again.”
I try to include my parents as much as possible in my life, and they try to meet me halfway. As for work, I’ve reached a point where I finally feel comfortable. But I never forget where I come from, and today, I am proud of it. Over the 15 years I’ve been a journalist, I’ve realised coming from a different “class” – and a non-English-speaking background – has its advantages, too. I’ve been able to report on migrant experiences in a way that someone without that understanding or background wouldn’t be able to.
Caroline Zielinski is a property reporter at The Age.
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