Media and policy discussions sometimes make it seem as if there was a golden age for social mobility into cultural occupations. This chapter interrogates that idea. It shows how social mobility has been a long-standing problem for cultural occupations. First the chapter discusses the key theories of social mobility, differentiating the academic and policy uses of the term.It then uses the ONS-LS dataset to track social mobility into cultural occupations over time. In the early 1980s someone from a middle-class origin had about four times the odds of entering a cultural job, as compared with working-class origin people. These chances were almost the same in the early 2010s.The static rates of social mobility into cultural jobs suggests three things. First, that cultural occupations share some social mobility issues that are common in other elite professions. Second, that rather than things getting worse in recent years cultural occupations have perhaps always been exclusive and exclusionary. Third, there is a clear need to understand the mechanisms driving this long-standing problem.

We usually think of culture as a good thing. Arts organisations and governments tell us that culture has a range of benefits for individuals and for societies. This is in addition to the value of culture for its own sake.However, culture is closely related to a range of social inequalities. There are inequalities in the workforce for cultural occupations. There are inequalities in the audiences for arts and culture. Culture also plays an important role in relation to how social inequality reproduces itself.This chapter introduces the book, its core argument and themes, and structure. It shows the importance of studying cultural occupations, as a framework for understanding culture and inequality. It also highlights the relationship between the workforce and the audience, demonstrating the consequences of the barriers to diverse and equal representation that is central to the analysis in the rest of the chapters.

There are many ways that culture is good for individuals and for society. It has positive effects on health, on education, on places, and on communities. Culture has value in and of itself, irrespective of its impact on social or economic issues. The good culture can do is a key reason for cultural workers’ commitment to cultural occupations, as well as central to much government and organisational policy. This chapter looks at the ways culture is good for us, drawing on recent policy and research documents. The chapter complements the analysis of policy and research with interview data from cultural workers.By making the case that culture is good for you, the chapter introduces the problem of inequality that is the subject of the rest of the book. Inequalities in production and in consumption mean that, sadly, culture is only good for narrow and closed sections of society.

Inequalities in cultural production and cultural consumption begin very early in an individual’s life. This chapter analyses survey and interview data to understand how access to culture in childhood might influence getting in and getting on in cultural occupations later in life.The chapter introduces the concept of cultural capital, the cultural resources that help some people feel at home in cultural, and other professional, occupations.The interview data illustrates a theme that runs throughout the rest of the chapters. What seems to be a set of experiences shared by all cultural workers actually hides significant differences. The differences in childhood experience of, and access to, culture reflect social inequalities. In particular social class is crucial in determining who gets access to cultural resources. These include music, drama, poetry, and dance, along with books and libraries. Differing levels of cultural capital, in the context of our unequal education system, mean that the absence of a level playing field for cultural occupations begins very early in life.

The introductory chapter opens with a stark image of what deported ‘Black Britons’ are returned to when they arrive back in Jamaica. It then situates the deportation stories in the book in wider historical context, tracing how the turn to deportation emerged in the UK and other countries of the global North. The chapter then provides a recent history of the figure of the ‘foreign criminal’ in British political discourse, before tracking the journey from Empire Windrush to the deportation of ‘Black Britons’ today. Next, after introducing the theoretical framework and explaining the book’s core focus on the connection between racism and immigration control, the chapter turns to questions of methodology, offering a vivid account of how the research was conducted, and discussing some of the ethical and political questions that emerged in the process.

Cultural occupations have long-standing problems associated with a lack of social mobility. This chapter explains how those problems are experienced by cultural workers. In doing so it shows some of the mechanisms by which exclusions operate.The chapter introduces academic critiques of the idea of social mobility, linking them to the way particular individuals and communities are given value in cultural occupations. The chapter outlines the idea of embodied cultural resources, or capitals, along with the ‘norm’ of the White, middle-class male, in cultural occupations. This somatic norm helps to explain the negative experiences of cultural workers who are not White, middle-class origin men. The chapter highlights the experiences of socially mobile women of colour, a group who are most likely to face marginalisation and discrimination. In doing so the chapter shows the powerful underlying mechanisms preventing change in cultural occupations.

This introduction argues that the central role played by the corporation is of crucial importance to the dynamics of the climate crisis and the ecocide that the planet faces. The corporation is a major threat to us, yet it is a threat that we are not taking seriously enough. The evidence set out in this chapter indicates that we have a problem that cannot simplistically be dismissed as the fault of a few "rogue" or "bad apple" corporations. In each of the examples discussed here - fossil fuels, tobacco, asbestos, synthetic chemicals and the car industry - all of the corporate executives who were in charge of making deadly products knew exactly what they were doing. They were fully aware of the consequences, but did it anyway. This introduction therefore poses a key question that sets up the rest of the book: if all of the industrial processes that are threatening the end of the species are financed, manufactured and distributed under the control of profit-making corporations, and they have chosen time and time again to sweep the problem under the carpet, then why are corporations not seen as central to the planet's problems?

The conclusion draws together the overall themes of the book, looking at individual experiences of inequality, the problem of shared experiences that obscure structural inequalities, and the long-term and long-standing nature of inequalities.The conclusion defends the book’s project of making inequalities visible in order to tailor appropriate solutions. Making inequality visible suggests the need to develop appropriate theories of inequality and culture. The book concludes by thinking through what strong and weak theories of culture and inequality might look like, and what solutions they might suggest to the problems we have made visible in our analysis.Ultimately the conclusion restates the value of culture, and the need to challenge inequality so that everyone can experience the way that culture is good for you.