Global Pressures, Household Social Reproduction Strategies and Compound Inequality

There is increasing interest in social reproduction and the international political economy of the everyday and the ways that the global economy rests on domestic foundations not just including state institutions but micro-social structures such as households and families. This paper uses data derived from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to explore the way that different types of household (using proxies for social class) one aspect of their social reproduction strategies. It argues that under conditions of increased global competitiveness, the UK state has successfully embedded a politics of competitiveness at the household scale. Households of all types are aspirational for their children and invest parental time in helping their children with educational activities. However, parents in middle class occupations, with higher levels of qualifications and income have advantageous informational, cultural and financial resources and use these in a variety of ways to support their social reproduction strategies. The result is that agential responses to competitiveness result in ‘compound inequalities’. We theorise this as demonstrating variegation across different household social reproduction strategies and embodying the violence of social reproduction, even where there is no violent intent. We speculate that compound inequality may be causing a breakdown in the stable reproduction of society as a whole.

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