Rivka's Meme: Answers
Mar. 28th, 2009 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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glitzfrau: Understanding the UK class system when you immigrate from Ireland. Finding your place in it, and being horrified.
I don't think I do understand it. Parts of it are hard to see. I think there's more of it than the class system in Ireland, but that could be because there's more of it above me - the class system is easiest to see from the bottom anyway.
My place as an Irish person was automatically lower than it was in Ireland. That's changing now as my accent changes; a lot of people can't tell I'm Irish at all and that raises my class status considerably. Also, I was far more employable over here than in Ireland, which improved my economic class no end.
I find aspects of class very confusing. Middle class: I use teapots and cups and saucers and tablecloths and prefer guests not to help wash up if they are only over for dinner, because my internalised idea of Having People Over For Dinner formally includes a lot of the stuff people used to manage with servants (my mother grew up with A Girl Who Did, though we never had that kind of help growing up. I have a cleaning lady once a fortnight, who thinks I'm insane but likes me). Working class: I don't spend money without massive overthinking, and frequently feel poor. Middle class: I assume most people I meet are well-read and fairly intellectual. Working class: I don't go to the kinds of cultural events middle class people often do. Middle class: I argued my cleaning lady into higher pay.
That's not clear either. It's not even accurate.
Where I am now feels very middle class to me. But I no longer really know what the external perception is, which is largely because I'm not looking for paying jobs any more. That really made things clear.
"How do you do, and what do you do?" is a social opening gambit which puts me on the bottom of a social status pile, but I don't know whether that's linked to my personal place in the class system, my family's place, or orthogonal.
glitzfrau: Understanding the UK class system when you immigrate from Ireland. Finding your place in it, and being horrified.I don't think I do understand it. Parts of it are hard to see. I think there's more of it than the class system in Ireland, but that could be because there's more of it above me - the class system is easiest to see from the bottom anyway.
My place as an Irish person was automatically lower than it was in Ireland. That's changing now as my accent changes; a lot of people can't tell I'm Irish at all and that raises my class status considerably. Also, I was far more employable over here than in Ireland, which improved my economic class no end.
I find aspects of class very confusing. Middle class: I use teapots and cups and saucers and tablecloths and prefer guests not to help wash up if they are only over for dinner, because my internalised idea of Having People Over For Dinner formally includes a lot of the stuff people used to manage with servants (my mother grew up with A Girl Who Did, though we never had that kind of help growing up. I have a cleaning lady once a fortnight, who thinks I'm insane but likes me). Working class: I don't spend money without massive overthinking, and frequently feel poor. Middle class: I assume most people I meet are well-read and fairly intellectual. Working class: I don't go to the kinds of cultural events middle class people often do. Middle class: I argued my cleaning lady into higher pay.
That's not clear either. It's not even accurate.
Where I am now feels very middle class to me. But I no longer really know what the external perception is, which is largely because I'm not looking for paying jobs any more. That really made things clear.
"How do you do, and what do you do?" is a social opening gambit which puts me on the bottom of a social status pile, but I don't know whether that's linked to my personal place in the class system, my family's place, or orthogonal.