The End of a Traditional Class Distinction in Neoliberal Society: ‘White-collar’ and ‘Blue-collar’ Work and its Impact on Chilean Workers’ Class Consciousness

Abstract

For several decades, the distinction between ‘white-collar’ (non-manual) and ‘blue-collar’ (manual) work occupied a central place in the analysis of working-class consciousness. According to many scholars, the expansion of non-manual employment was key to dismantling traditional working-class identities. Although several analysts noted the irrelevance of the white-collar/blue-collar distinction as a determinant of class consciousness, the most recent research on class in Chile continues on the traditional argument. However, the empirical research supporting such a contention has been scarce. In this paper I test that hypothesis. Based on quantitative and qualitative data, I show that the distinction between manual and non-manual labor does not lead to significant variations in workers’ class consciousness. Therefore, its use in recent research on class (e.g. the contention that non-manual employment reinforces a ‘middle-class’ consciousness among workers) is deemed questionable.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.