SPECIAL ARTICLE

All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go

Transitions to (Un)Employment for Lower Middle Class
Young Men
Andrew Deuchar

This article draws upon the theoretical framework

of Pierre Bourdieu to examine the capacity of
lower-middle-class young men in Dehradun to gain
employment. Despite having tertiary-level education,
their search for employment is an extended one, marked
by anxiety, hardship and uncertainty, which often
precipitates a sense of hopelessness and shame. By
utilising qualitative research methods, this article shows
how youth contest their marginalisation, for example,
by equipping themselves with skills and competencies,
or migrating. Despite their attempts, the educated
lower-middle-class youth in Dehradun do not possess
sufficient stocks of economic, cultural and social capital
to consolidate their class position. These findings
contribute to debates about the Indian middle classes,
social reproduction and neo-liberal development.

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful

comments on an earlier draft of this article. I would also like to thank all
those who participated in this study.
Andrew Deuchar (ard962@uowmail.edu.au) is at the Faculty of
Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University.

104

he dramatic expansion of formal education across the

global south has generated significant scholarly interest
in its social, cultural, political and economic effects.
Although, research within this field is diffuse and varied, there is
an emerging facet within it that shows how educated youth are
excluded from meaningful employment opportunities (Arnot
et al 2012; Crivello 2011; Jeffery, R et al 2005; Jeffrey et al
2005a, 2005b; Rogers 2008; Susanti 2011). This literature has
shown how education is experienced differently by various social groups, and how success in finding meaningful work is
closely related to ones social class position.
While these analyses have focused predominately on the
experiences of poor and minority social groups, this article
explores the capacity of educated lower-middle-class youth in
Dehradun to find employment. In doing so, it addresses a
shortfall in the literature by theorising social change through
the lens of those living in-between (Young and Jeffrey 2012:
46). Young and Jeffrey (2012) conceptualise in-betweenness in
three senses, all of which are pertinent to this article. First,
they live in-between the rich and poor in the class structure;
second, they live between the rural and urban areas; and
third, they are in-between life stages, from youth to adulthood. To what extent can youth living in-between find
meaningful work, and what does this tell us about class formation? What are the trajectories of these youth and what are the
implications of this for Indian development more broadly?
This article addresses these and related questions by drawing upon the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu (1984,
1986, 1990). In particular, it utilises his formulation of economic, cultural and social capital, and his conceptualisation of
habitus and field. Bourdieu (1984) views economic capital in
the Marxist sense, as determined by ones relationship to the
means of production. Cultural capital can be seen as a set of
cultural competencies and can be institutionalised in the form
of educational credentials; social capital can be seen as networks that actors can draw upon to realise potential or actual
credit (Bourdieu 1984, 1986, 1990). The latter two capitals are
crucial for class formation because they each have a structure
of value independent of economic resources or income.
For Bourdieu (1984, 1990), society consists of competitive
cultural fields, which he likens to games, and it is within these
fields that capitals are exchanged. Those that enter a field with
greater stocks of capital enter with an advantage, and, therefore,
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stand to benefit the most. Importantly, agents acquire a feel for

the game in which they are socialised, and this forms what
Bourdieu (1990: 53) calls the habitus. Possessing the correct
habitus for a given field or having the right skill for the game
will increase the chances of an agents success within it. As I
will demonstrate, this framework is particularly useful for
theorising educated youths transition to employment, given
the centrality of education within it, as well its emphasis upon
how class structures are forged through practice (Fernandes
and Heller 2006).
In addition to this, because employment is intricately bound
up with social and cultural constructions of gender (Makiwane and Kwizera 2009: 230), exploring the capacity of young
men to find work is a rich terrain to examine how they forge a
sense of masculinity. Invoking the term masculinity means
talking about gender relations (Connell 1995). Because these
relations are forged through practice, masculinity itself should
not be seen as static or fixed, but rather produced through
social interaction.
Conceptualising gender relations in this way enables
researchers to emphasise with the importance of economic and
institutional structures in producing masculinities, as well as
the dynamic and changing nature of gender itself (ibid: 35).
This framework also allows space to explore the geography of
masculinities, emphasising how they are produced through an
interplay between global, regional and local levels (Connell
and Messerschmidt 2005; Gutmann 2003; Ouzgane and
Morrell 2005).
With this in mind, this article theorises whether lower-middleclass young men in Dehradun are able to develop a sense of
masculinity, and how this is related to their experiences of
finding work. In doing so, this article highlights how emerging
patterns of class formation intersect with and affect the production of masculinity in the Indian context.
Such analyses of youth are timely given the recent demographic changes that have taken place in India. Bloom et al
(2003) argue that when changes in the age structure of a given
population are such that the vast majority are of working age,
nations can experience a period of significant economic
growth. This is because of increased productivity and decreased expenditure on dependents.
However, Corbridge et al (2013) argue that high levels of
unemployment and poor quality education are likely to have
particularly adverse effects on Indias development trajectory.
Indeed, what has in some east Asian countries enabled economic growth could turn out to be a negative risk in the Indian context (ibid: 301). Crises in employment generation (Jeffrey and McDowell 2004) and rural livelihood destruction
(Dyson 2010; Ganguly-Scrase and Lahiri-Dutt 2013) give substance to these arguments. This article contributes to these
debates by charting the hardships and struggles this cohort
faces when seeking work, as well as the ways they contest
their marginalisation.
The data presented here comes from a three-month period of
fieldwork conducted from June to August 2012. Having established contacts in the field, data was gathered using qualitative
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research methods including semi-structured interviews and

participant observation. In total, 30 interviews were conducted with various stakeholders, including teachers, staff at
coaching clinics, and small business owners, however, the majority (N=19) were with lower-middle-class young men who
had college-level education and were either working, or looking for work. Interviews lasted an average of 20 minutes, however, my key informants were interviewed multiple times and
often up to an hour.
In addition to this, spending long periods of time with young
people as they attempted to find work or when they were simply hanging out proved a valuable source of information. I
was also given the opportunity to teach (informally) at a
coaching clinic, and it was here that I was able to explore the
meanings that young people attribute to the skills they are
seeking to gain. This methodological approach was designed
to facilitate linkages between theoretical insights of (predominantly western) academia, and the social worlds of
participants in Dehradun.
The following two sections of this article position it in relation to debates about education and unemployment, and the
Indian middle classes, respectively. Then, I show the difficulties young people in Dehradun face trying to gain employment, and the ways they contest their marginalisation. Finally,
I outline my main findings and situate these within broader
debates about youth in the global south, social change, and
neo-liberal development.
1 Education and Unemployment

Educated unemployment is not a new phenomenon in the

global south. However, some scholars suggest that the extent
of it is increasing in the neo-liberal period because educational
institutions are being undermined (de Cohen 2003; Henales
and Edwards 2002; Hoffman 1995; Makiwane and Kwizera
2009: 229; Susanti 2011; Torche 2005). For example, Hoffman
(1995) argues that in Africa privatisation is having a bifurcating effect on the education system, which in turn structures
inequitable opportunities for employment. Other scholars show
how problems associated with the overproduction of college
graduates are compounded by increasingly hostile labour
markets in which degree holders are forced to work in poorly
paid, unskilled positions (Cross 2009; Gooptu 2009: 51;
Jeffery, R et al 2005; Jeffrey 2008).
In addition to this, it has been shown how more flexible
ways of organising workplaces and labour, such as the shift to
contract work and temporary employment, have undermined
peoples sense of stability in the workplace (Chiu et al 2008;
Fernandes 2000). This work can be seen as a corollary to historic lines of inquiry, which problematises the role of formal
education in facilitating social mobility, particularly in regions
where structural inequalities shape and constrain life chances
(Crivello 2011: 408; Kumar 1985, 1989; Navlakha 1984; Scrase
1993; Seshadri 1976).
For young men across the global south, paid employment is a
key signifier of ones arrival to adulthood and of their masculine
status (Osella and Osella 2000). With this in mind, scholars
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have shown how exclusion from socially constructed visions of

success precipitates a sense of failure and hopelessness among
young men (Jeffrey 2008, 2010; Mains 2007; Rogers 2008).
Based upon his work on a college campus in southern India,
for example, Rogers (2008) argues that the sexual harassment
of female students is a response of lower-class and lower-caste
young men to the negative effects of globalisation. Because
these young men are excluded from the benefits of social
transformation, they forge cultures of masculine violence to
compete for status and power.
This work highlights the importance of gender as an analytical category in the global south and brings attention to the
ways youth subvert and contest dominant social norms (Beazley 2003; Dyson 2010; Jeffrey 2010; Nisbett 2007). In doing
so, it forms part of an emerging paradigm of youth research
that is characterised by its attention to the agency of youth, its
holistic focus on their cultural practice, and its interest in
how identities are produced in ways that combine facets
of global capitalism, transnationalism and local culture
(Bucholtz 2002: 525).
This article contributes to these debates by examining the
capacity of lower-middle-class youth in Dehradun to gain employment. By focusing specifically on the Indian middle classes (Fernandes 2000, 2006; Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009;
Nijman 2006), this article makes some important contributions to the existing literature. First, the work mentioned
above focuses almost explicitly on the experiences of poor and
minority social groups. While this has generated fruitful insights, such as highlighting new forms of domination and resistance, there is a tendency to assume that the experiences of
the middle classes are necessarily positive (Fernandes 2000).
This article builds upon the paucity of literature that has challenged this assumption (Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009;
Fernandes 2000; Jeffrey 2010).
Second, even when research has engaged with the lower
middle classes it has usually done so in metropolitan areas.
While this work has usefully shown new dynamics of class formation, it is unlikely that those living in the periphery have
similar experiences. For example, Gooptu (2009: 50) argues
that in Kolkata, work within the retail sector has enabled the
lower middle classes to prevent themselves from falling into
the ranks of the poor. In Dehradun, despite its relatively diverse economy, such employment opportunities are vastly outnumbered by the graduates seeking them. Variances such as
this invite researchers to ask questions about the lives of those
living beyond urban centres, and carve out a place for their
narratives in accounts of globalisation and social transformation (Lee and Yeoh 2005: 1).
2 Neo-liberal Development and the Indian Middle Classes

Liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s was

accompanied by a set of public discourses that celebrated the
dramatic increase in the size of the middle class (Bhatt et al
2010; Fernandes 2000, 2006; Fernandes and Heller 2006;
Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009; Jeffrey 2010). These discourses were circulated through various mainstream media
106

and often depict young urban consumers who are employed in

the private sector, and have the confidence to negotiate the
global economy (Varma 1998; Wyatt 2005). While the initial
academic debate regarding this social group was preoccupied
with whether their consumption practices were right or wrong
(Fernandes 2000), recent scholarly work has problematised
the assumption that the middle classes are the primary beneficiaries of structural adjustment (Deshpande 2003; Fernandes
2000, 2006; Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009; Jeffrey 2010).
For example, in her study of the urban middle classes in
Mumbai, Fernandes (2000) argues that the employment climate for the lower middle classes is characterised by processes
of retrenchment, increased job insecurity and a shift to subcontracted work (ibid: 96). Given these hardships, Fernandes
(2000) concludes that the new middle class as represented
in public discourse actually depicts the upper echelons of that
class, and its newness is constituted through its identification with a new economic sector the private sector rather
than newness of its social basis. Such historical continuity of
middle-classness is seemingly at odds with idealised images
propagating new avenues for upward mobility.
With this in mind, recent scholarship has highlighted the
struggles which the lower middle classes face, and how these
are related to structural inequalities such as crises in employment generation and the devaluing of educational credentials
(Cross 2009; Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009; Jeffery, R et al
2005; Jeffrey and McDowell 2004; Rogers 2008). Interdisciplinary research has also brought attention to the ways that these
people contend their exclusion from meaningful employment
(Crivello 2011; Gough 2008; Jeffrey 2010; Jeffrey, C et al 2004,
Jeffrey et al 2004; Jeffery, R et al 2005; Mains 2007, 2012). For
example, some young people attend private tuition centres
and coaching clinics in order to equip themselves with the
skills necessary to gain employment (Fernandes 2006). Others
question the validity of formal education, whilst some use
their credentials to participate in local politics (Jeffrey 2008,
2010; Jeffrey, C et al 2004, Jeffrey et al 2004).
A related body of work has examined the relationship between migration and transitions to work, conceiving of migration in terms of displacement rather than choice. For example,
some scholars show how high levels of urban migration have
been caused by rural livelihood destruction (Ganguly-Scrase
and Lahiri-Dutt 2013; Potts 2010). Even when it is a chosen
strategy, it has been shown how peoples experiences are considerably unlike their expectations (Crivello 2011; Mains 2012;
Osella and Osella 1999, 2000). Others show how young people
who live between urban and rural areas forge a livelihood by
often moving between the two (Young and Jeffrey 2012).
While it is broadly recognised that accumulating wealth and
accessing modernity are key motivations for young mens desires to migrate (Mains 2012; Osella and Osella 2000), repeated attention has been drawn to the numerous obstacles they
face in the process. This article explores the extent to which
lower-middle-class men in Dehradun face such struggles, and
critically examines the strategies they deploy in order to gain
work. It is to such analysis that I now turn.
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3 Seeking Employment, Enduring Hardship

Sanjay graduated with a commerce degree from a large college in the town centre and was looking for employment in
Dehradun. He sat for an examination to get a government job
in the banking sector, but because of the sheer amount of graduates that sit for these examinations, they have become extremely competitive. Because Sanjay did not get the results
that he needed, he decided to try and find a comparable job in
the private sector.
Although the private sector has historically been frowned
upon by the middle classes in India, in recent years that status
has begun to change. Contemporaneously, employment within its upper echelons (particularly information technology)
has been redefined by the elite as desirable and virtuous. It
was such a job that Sanjay had in mind when he graduated in
2010. However, in the two years since, he had had three different jobs, as well as five months of unemployment. As he explains, finding stable employment is very hard:
Every day I am going to the internet caf, sending the emails, making
calls. I am always trying to update my CV. I send it off to all the places,
sometimes you hear back, sometimes not. I have been for many interviews also, I dress nice, and I think that this goes well. But there are
too many people going for the job, everyone is going. And I aim high, I
go for the big job, but you have to go for the job that you can get.

The employment that Sanjay was able to secure was unstable and poorly paid. Although a graduate of commerce, he has
recently finished work for an event management company. He
took the opportunity because he was promised a pay rise after
six months if he proved reliable. After working for six months,
he asked for the pay rise, but his employer told him that he was
unable to pay it. Sanjay said that he would not be able to continue
working on the wage that he was earning (Rs 4,500 per month)
because he would not be able to marry and become independent
of his own parents. While this partially negates his masculinity,
this negation is only partial precisely because of his relatively
young age. He said that if he is in the same position in his late
20s, then this would be very, very bad. In this sense, there
are limits to the amount of time that middle-class young men
are able to spend in jobs that are not seen as suitable for a career.
I interviewed Sanjay two weeks later and he told me that he
had left his job, after being unable to reach an agreement with
his employer: You see, for me, I cannot do this work, if I am
earning ten thousand, fifteen thousand then I can do it, but
four and a half thousand! These are the things, there are so
many people, I will go and a fresher will take my place. While
issues of economic capital and masculine status are intertwined, Sanjay had reconciled himself with the negative
effects that his job had on his masculinity. Yet, the wage that
he was able to secure was simply inadequate. His employer
insisted that he only employed college graduates, yet would
pay them a very small wage.
For graduates that have not had any experience, such offers
are seen as stepping stones to better-paying, more stable
jobs. Yet, they also feel that such jobs are highly dependent
upon familial connections and the capacity to pay bribes.
Lower-middle-class young men do not often have such
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connections, or the capacity to pay bribes. As such, opportunities do not always unfold over time, as had been hoped.
Many youth find themselves in jobs they are overqualified
for, or jobs that bear no relation to what they actually studied.
For example, Deepak had studied engineering at a private college. It was not one of the reputed colleges, but a smaller one
on the northern side of town. After failing to get a job in the
government sector, he sought employment in the private sector.
He currently works as an administrator at a newly-opened
coaching clinic, where he also occasionally teaches English. I
asked him how he ended up working in this job:
I finished my studies and I was looking for the job. Every day I am looking. I used to come here as a student to learn the skills, and now I can
speak nice English. Still it is hard to get a good job. The sir here offered
me this position because he said that I am one of his best students. I
took this opportunityI like the work here also, but I do this because I
have to you know? I cannot do this for a long time, I dont think.

The devaluation of his credentials is a considerable source of

shame for Deepak. While he and his parents were very proud
when he graduated, he says that he feels embarrassed working
in his current role. Yet, what distinguishes Deepak from the
lower classes and affirms his (middle-class) masculinity is his
command of English and the association of his role with the
global economy. Nevertheless, like other young men from a
similar class position in Dehradun, lower-level service sector
jobs are unable to uphold their middle-class status for long
periods of time. For this reason, Deepaks class location and
employment prospects in the local economy are precarious.
The scarcity of such jobs and the overproduction of college
graduates has precipitated a situation that plays into the hands
of employers rather than employees. Many youth spoke of having to take opportunities well below those that they had anticipated, only to find themselves being replaced by new graduates who were willing to work for less. When they were able to
secure reasonable positions, these young people had to work
rather long hours, for which they were not remunerated. The
intensification of work and increasing demands are common
experiences among those employed. In this sense the experiences of lower-middle-class young men resonate with those of
poorer social groups in other parts of India (Cross 2009).
4 Hopelessness and Shame

The uncertainty associated with finding work was compounded by the fact that young people in Dehradun have increasing
aspirations. This paradox has been noted by other scholars
researching the Indian middle classes (Ganguly-Scrase and
Scrase 2009) and has precipitated new tensions in the lives of
those who participated in this study. Youth who aspire to middleclass positions within employment, but have not as yet,
secured them, often feel like they have failed:
I have been educated, this is important for me I think. Now I must get
a job, if I dont, then what is the point? There will be many things that I
cannot do in my life, and there are people that expect these things, and
I want these things also. I must do this for my family but still it is hard.

For young men the difficulties associated with finding

employment often manifest as feelings of hopelessness and
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shame. Many youth in their late 20s envisage being dependent

on their parents for many more years. In this sense, there has
been an (involuntary) temporal extension of youth (Jeffrey
and McDowell 2004: 135) which has also destabilised their
masculine status. Nevertheless, all the young men that I spoke
with said that they would like to have stable employment before they turn 30 years old, or preferably earlier. Therefore,
the idealised temporal dimensions of transitions to adulthood
have remained relatively stable in the space of a generation.
For some, the inability to find suitable work is causing tensions within the home. Parents often expressed the idea that
the younger generation is lazy. Further, because the lower
middle classes will not engage in forms of work that would
threaten their middle-class status, such as manual work, they
often endure long periods of unemployment. One man describes
the situation like this:
I am in my late twenties now, since I was twenty-three I have been
looking for a good job. When I was younger I thought that I would be
working the nice job by this time you know, in the office, driving a
car. But I am still living with my mother and father. Everybody around
here knows this, they are saying Oh does [Vipin] have a job?, they are
not just saying this about me, they are saying it about my friends also.
If I get a small job, this will even be worse for me! I want to get the big
job so they will say Vipin is having the big job. I will dress nice, maybe
I could have a girlfriend and buy her nice things [laughs]. These are
the things that I want you know. But I do not have these thingsthis is
not good for me and my family.

Having not realised socially constructed ideals of middleclass masculinity, young men feel as though they have let
themselves and others down. Yet varying social groups respond to these feelings in different ways. Whereas lower-class
men, in the study by Rogers (2008), develop masculine cultures of violence to contend their marginalisation, for lowermiddle-class youth in Dehradun, participating in such violence
is seen as lowly. Although similar cultures exist and are articulated in and around college campuses, such as violent rioting between student political bodies, lower-middle-class youth
participate in ways that reinforce their status, such as writing
to local newspapers and debating their views through formal
means. Fighting would negatively affect their reputation, and
may hamper their future employment prospects.
On the one hand, social norms are such that lower-middleclass men acutely feel the burdens of unemployment because it
signifies a rupture in the familys social reproduction. Yet, at
the same time, these social norms also affect how youth
respond to their marginalisation. The difference between how
lower-class and lower-middle-class youth respond to their current circumstances demonstrates how the production of masculine cultures intersects with social class position.
Feelings of hopelessness and shame are one of the ways that
structural inequalities are embodied and individualised
amongst young people. Importantly, scholars have shown how
these feelings are fundamental for the maintenance of the
neo-liberal regime. For example, Gooptu (2009) argues that in
neo-liberal India, workplaces are playing a key role in crafting
workers and citizens by cultivating subjectivities that support
the needs of the market. As Gooptu (2009: 54) states,
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[Workers] seek personal solutions to structurally or systemically generated problems in the economyThey emphasise the responsibility,
autonomy and agency of the self-driven, enterprising individual, who
is prepared to work within the constraints of a competitive and unstable market economy.

From this perspective, if one is having difficulty finding or

keeping work, then it is because they are not working hard
enough and consequently have themselves to blame. Similarly,
educated youth in Dehradun feel that their inability to find
work is their own fault, rather than related to structural inequalities. Conceptualising the problem in this way, youth intensify their own schedules as a means of countering their
present realities.
5 Contending Unemployment

Youth have various strategies to further equip themselves with

skills to facilitate their transition to employment. One of the
main ways in which they do this is attending coaching clinics.
In neo-liberal India, elite fractions have attempted to hoard
access to newly valorised occupations by maintaining boundaries to the institutions within which necessary skills can be
gained (Fernandes 2006). In the context of Dehradun, private
educational institutions with exorbitant fees can be considered a case in point. Although most people are excluded from
these institutions, there is a broad-based demand amongst the
lower middle classes for spaces in which they can acquire comparable skills.
To satisfy this demand, coaching clinics have emerged,
which are designed to cultivate skills amongst individuals that
will prepare them for corporate employment. Thus, their focus
is on facilitating such attributes as group discussion skills,
effective communication and personality development.
Again, we can see the emphasis on the skill set of the individual and the denial of structural inequalities that marginalise
youth. Nevertheless, like private tuition, coaching clinics are
considered necessary by all that attend them, and are seen
as a way to ensure a smooth transition into the labour market.
I was interested in how youth made sense of the skills which
they feel are on offer through these coaching clinics. The following responses were typical:
Student 1: You see, these days you need leadership qualities; you have
to make decisions, and take risks. You have to be a leader, but still you
have to work in a team.
Student 2: Employers are looking [for] the people that can communicate effectively, that are assertive but not too aggressive.
Student 3: You must speak good English, this is a must. When you
are working in a team, when you are dealing with other companies
in India, and other companies abroad, this is a must, business is
globalised now.

As these comments highlight, youth attend these coaching

clinics with the intention of equipping themselves with a certain version of cultural competency assumed to be valued
within the field of corporate employment. Yet, despite the time
and money that youth dedicate to these clinics, there are no
formal qualifications on offer, although many employers
favour graduates who have done such courses. Nevertheless,
many youth I spoke to have enrolled in multiple coaching
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clinics over long periods of time without gaining work. One

man in his late 20s had spent the last three years attending
two separate clinics. He spoke English fairly well, but was unable to get a job that pays an acceptable salary. He discussed
his experiences at a group discussion class where students
were asked to speak about what sort of employment they
wanted in the future:
When I was a young boy, I thought about going abroad. Actually Dubai, this is the only place that I had heard of. I finished my studies
and I was looking for the big job, abroad or in India...Now that I am
older, I dont think this will be an opportunity for me. Many times I
have tried to become a government officer, but I think that it is too late
now (because he is nearing the age limit at which one can apply). I am
currently working in a private publishing company as a clerk. I do not
want to do this work, the money is not good there, but I have to do it
while I search for other jobs.

Although devoting considerable time and money to coaching clinics, and having a firm grasp on the skills that are considered as ones that broaden ones opportunities, this young
man has been unable to convert them into employment and,
thus, economic capital. For unemployed and underemployed
youth in these circumstances, there are growing anxieties
about realising and reproducing societal expectations. One
young man wryly described the feeling as being all dressed up
with nowhere to go.
Although young men in Dehradun have been far from content with their circumstances, this did not translate into overt
forms of political protest. One reason for this, as has been noted above, is that young men feel they themselves are to blame,
rather than structural inequalities, and so endeavour to work
harder. Furthermore, participating in violent masculine cultures on campus would threaten their middle-class status. Yet,
there were additional reasons for this, which resonates with
the findings of other scholars work.
Based on her ethnographic work in Mumbai, for example,
Fernandes (2006) argues that the production of middle-class
identity mediates political responses to neo-liberal transformation. From Fernandess (2006) perspective, current hardships and political opposition to them are eclipsed by the
promise of future benefits conveyed within images of middleclass success. While this argument does not fully appreciate
the subtle and informal ways that people engage in politics
(Jeffrey 2010, 2013), the broad thrust of Fernandess (2000)
argument holds true for unemployed youth in Dehradun who
feel that things will get better. This is also reinforced by the
findings of Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase (2009), who found that
the lower middle classes in Kolkata felt that a brighter future
lay ahead despite their rather acute marginalisation. In this
sense, current difficulties were perceived to be temporally
limited. In addition, however, young men in Dehradun conceive of their hardship as spatially limited, which in turn
encourages them to migrate in search of work.
6 Migration for Employment

Recent scholarly work has drawn attention to the relationship

between educational aspirations and spatial mobility (Adams
and Kirova 2006). In the Indian context, for example, some
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scholars have highlighted the ways that migration to major cities both within India and abroad is seen as a way of realising
visions of manliness, such as Osella and Osellas (2000) study
of youth in Kerala. Srivastava (1996: 404) argues that in India
the metropolis is bound up with historical discourses of (masculine) national identity:
[The Metropolis is] a settlement of the mind: an imagined configuration of desires and comforts, hopes and projections; a specific way of
viewing the unfolding of both every day human life and the more distant future in which these lives may find their destinies.

In this way the relations of power and exploitation that

characterise life in the city are transcended, and life in the
city becomes synonymous with opportunity. The metropolis
becomes a fetish (ibid).
In my study, some youth had moved to nearby cities in search
of greater opportunities, yet experienced prolonged periods
of unemployment or were forced into types of labour that
would have been available in Dehradun. For example, Rajendra
studied hospitality management and initially wanted to get
a job in one of Indias major cities. He felt that the extent
of tourism in these areas would enable him to earn a decent
living and also consolidate his English. However, because
Rajendra does not have any friends or relatives in these locations, moving to them would involve initial costs that he is
unable to meet. With this in mind, he decided to move to a
nearby regional centre, Nainital, because living expenses are
much cheaper and it is also a relatively popular tourist destination. Although he got a job straight away, it was not what
he had anticipated. Rajendra was employed as a concierge,
but said that he spent most of his working day in the kitchen
washing up and preparing food.
Rajendra did this work for five months, but left because he
felt that there was little chance of promotion or his role changing. At present, he is unemployed and living with his parents
in Dehradun. Graduates that had found work in Delhi said that
the living expenses were such that they were forced to live in
overcrowded apartments with rudimentary amenities; one
man lived with four other people in a two bedroom flat because this was all he could afford. These difficulties encouraged the young men that I interviewed to return home. Their
experiences suggest a cyclical pattern of migration, which is
characterised by exploitation rather than opportunity and
entrepreneurial zest.
Returning to Dehradun compounds the sense of shame that
these young men feel. Because migration is construed in
popular discourse as necessarily positive, those that do
not find work outside of Dehradun consider themselves to
have failed. Having not returned with money, new clothes
and a girlfriend, it is ostensibly obvious to those in the community that their return was an involuntary one. Furthermore, these young men also feel condemned to live with
their parents indefinitely. Yet, the melancholy of these young
men is important: these young men are becoming critical
of neo-liberal discourse, although not always explicitly,
which emphasises the skill set of the individual over broader
structural inequalities.
109

SPECIAL ARTICLE

When we discussed their plans for the future, for example,

some young men said they felt that they had done all they
could, and would simply wait and see what happened in the
future. This attitude towards the future is reminiscent of the
way in which Jeffrey (2010) discusses that of young men in
Meerut. Of course, this is not to say that these young men
would not take meaningful employment if it were offered,
and boredom itself does not preclude the possibility of future
migration, as Mains (2007, 2012) has pointed out. Although
none of the young men discussed the possibility of organised
political protest, the shared discontent of lower-middle-class
youth is potentially crucial for the future of neo-liberal development in India.
It must be said that the views of those youth who have
not migrated but are planning to do so are more ambiguous.
On the one hand, there are those that view migration
negatively because it means leaving familial and peer support
and embarking on an extremely uncertain search for employment. For these young men, migration is not a decision that
is made because they have an abundance of choices, but
because they have very few. On the other hand (and in greater number), there are those whose subjectivities are perhaps
more aligned with neo-liberal discourse. These young men
discuss migration in a positive way because they feel that it
will facilitate economic and social opportunities which are
simply not available locally.
When we discussed the possibility of not being able to get
the type or quality of work that they wanted, these young men
said that there are simply too many opportunities for this to be
case, and sometimes conceived of individuals who fail in these
circumstances pejoratively. For those that had not had any
first-hand experience of migration, the meanings they imbue it
with suggest that they see their current hardship spatially, i e,
as corresponding to a particular location and, therefore, easily
transcended. In a way that partially contradicted the views of
those that had experience of migration, the outcome of this
position is that overt forms of political engagement here and
now are nullified by the assumption that social opportunities
await them in another time and place.
7 Conclusions

Lower-middle-class youths experiences of employment in

Dehradun resonate with the findings of other scholars who
suggest neo-liberal reform has increased hardship and uncertainty in the workplace (Fernandes 2000; Ganguly-Scrase and
Scrase 2009; Jeffrey 2008, 2010). This article also parallels
scholarship that highlights unemployment as a common experience of youth in the global south (Gough 2008; Jeffrey 2008,
2010; Mains 2007, 2012; Rogers 2008) and speaks of the ways
that neo-liberal reforms have hastened global and regional imbalances in access to secure salaried employment (Jeffrey and
McDowell 2004:137). As has been noted in other contexts
(Mains 2007; Jeffrey 2010; Rogers 2008), these structural inequalities are individualised and embodied as feelings of hopelessness and shame, which further inhibits the extent to which
young men are able to consolidate their masculinity.
110

Given the hardships and struggles that they face, the lives of
the lower middle classes resemble those of the lower classes
(Cross 2009; Jeffrey 2008, 2010) to a greater degree than the
elite upper fractions (Fuller and Narasimhan 2007). This suggests downward mobility and a temporal extension of youth at
the same time as neo-liberal ideologues circulate discourses
that celebrate their upward trajectories.
On a theoretical level, this article can also be read as a
modest attempt to attune theories of social reproduction to
contemporary dynamics of social change. In Dehradun, the
cultural capital that the lower middle classes have historically
deployed and embodied to hoard resources has been redefined by the upper fractions within that class as outdated and
redundant. Youth contest this by attempting to reorganise
their stocks of cultural capital through attending coaching
clinics to realign themselves with the dominant fractions.
Yet, as Bourdieu (1984, 1986) reminds us, social reproduction
and upward mobility depends upon the stocks of various
capitals that people have at their disposal. Therefore, unless
families have the economic and social capital necessary to
consolidate these skills, conversion strategies are problematised.
No longer able to draw upon their cultural distinction and
educational credentials to consolidate their social position,
the lower middle classes are marginalised. This point raises
important questions about theorising social change in the
neo-liberal era. Because the previous development model
enabled state-supported patterns of mobility for a broader
social base (particularly the middle classes), a Bourdieurian
framework was particularly suited to understanding the
variegated practices through which this class reproduced
itself. By demonstrating the multifaceted nature of educational advantage in particular, Bourdieu incorporated analyses of middle-class formation into a Marxist framework by
showing axes of exploitation and power between them and
the lower classes.
However, the dismantling of the welfare state is facilitating
polarisation between classes by undermining the position of
the middle classes (Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase 2009; Jeffrey
2010) and underscoring the supremacy of economic capital.
One of the main findings of this article, therefore, is that
the social conditions created by neo-liberal development
are such that a traditional Marxist framework is able to
produce similar results to a greater degree than in the
period preceding neo-liberalism about the politics of educated unemployment. With this in mind, the poor quality
of education and high level of unemployment is likely to
have particularly adverse effects for Indias future, and the
country may not be able to reap its demographic dividend
(Corbridge et al 2013).
This article, therefore, supports the view of those who conceive of neo-liberal development in India as an elite revolt
against political concessions won by various subaltern groups
(Corbridge and Harriss 2000: xix; Corbridge et al 2013). Given
the sheer size of this demographic cohort, more research that
engages with young people is needed if the trajectory of
neo-liberal development is to be meaningfully theorised.
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