How children negotiate and make sense of social class boundaries

摘要: This article aims to understand how children in a superdiverse Western European city actively negotiate their social position. Based on in-depth interviews with children aged 11–13, we highlight how a diverse group of children give meaning to social inequality and assess how they position themselves towards different socio-economic groups. We argue that children not only show an acute awareness of social differences but also engage in symbolic boundary-making to secure a positive self-identity. We analyse how children describe the ‘middle-class’ according to their own position, to present themselves as neither rich nor poor but as ‘normal’ or ‘ordinary’. However, as the children’s narratives reveal very different life chances, they use different identity management strategies to construct their own ‘ordinariness’.