ABSTRACT
The subjects of this study are the middle class and within that social grouping a particular fragment of that class, the new middle class. They are new in both senses in which this term has been sociologically employed. First, 45 per cent of the sample are recent entrants in that they have fathers employed in skilled and semiskilled occupational categories. Second, over 90 per cent are employed in the service industries as identified by Goldthorpe in Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1987). However, to assume that they comprise a homogenous grouping simply because of an upward trajectory (i.e. those for whom upward social mobility has been a feature of their current social positions) or because they are located in similar occupational positions (the service industries) is to ignore two important features: first, the differences involved in the acquisition of that mobility and, second, the degree of heterogeneity characteristic of the occupations in which they are employed. Failure to recognise the above points involves a failure to recognise the differing pathways to social mobility that have been taken and the potential impact of these differing pathways for leisure activity and other non-work areas of social life. Both of these deficiencies can be highlighted and illustrated by employing the conceptual framework developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
