Social class in Malta : insights into a homegrown relationship with special reference to education

Abstract

The economic and occupational map of contemporary Malta has encouraged strident, though unsupported, declarations that "we are all middle class now"; whereas a number of academics continue to suggest rigid configurations of conventional class categories and hierarchies. While the fundamental relevance of the social class concept and explanatory value in social analysis is nowadays questioned, one has yet to assess whether the Maltese socioeconomic formation and the experiences of production, distribution and exchange warrant an idiosyncratic, locale-specific, interpretation of social class. In other words, is a home grown theoretical framework for social class in Malta justifiable? Regretfully, a serious study which would work out inductively, from empirical data, a social class topography for contemporary Malta has yet to materialize. This article will nevertheless seek to serve as a further tentative inroad into research on social class in Malta, mainly on the basis of statistical and secondary data, plus some theoretical, albeit admittedly armchair, considerations where there is a dearth of other knowledge. It will propose an emergent, working definition of social class perhaps more sensitive to, and therefore sensible in, the Maltese context. Finally, it will also indicate some of the implications which may result from such new approaches to an otherwise hackneyed theme, using education as the referent.