Att veta sin klass : Kvinnors uppåtgående klassresor i Sverige

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines women’s upward class mobility in a Swedish context, with particular focus on notions of class, gender, race, Swedishness and sexuality. The thesis analyses qualitative interviews with 16 upwardly mobile women. In the analysis the women’s lived experiences, contextualized through structural processes, are in focus.The women’s educational success seems to be crucial in their understanding of how they were able to move out of the working class. The analysis suggests that being duktig (good, capable and efficient) is central in the women’s understanding of their upward class mobility. Further, the analysis shows that racialization and notions of Swedishness clearly structure the women’s experiences of upward class mobility in different ways.I argue that the women’s need to “escape” from working-class positions must be understood by highlighting the complex processes of inequalities based on notions of class, gender, race, Swedishness and sexuality. Moreover, contrasting dynamics within common stories of “class escape” suggest the possibility of using such narratives as entry points: not only into the complexities of social location in present-day Sweden; but also the complexities of what is required in order to move through social space.