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What always strikes me is that in the UK (well England more than NI) what is called "middle class" is not 25-75% income percentile...it is more top 25% and sometimes top 10%.
In NL/France that is the burgeousie and if you would try to pretend to be Dutch middle class in NL coming from that background the reaction would be a clear "Hah, lol, no".
Big houses and all that and middle class? Pffffffffffffft.
I had an acquaintance in uni, who tried to get in a golf club. No joy. When he said his dad was the owner of a well known factory, suddenly he got an invite. So clearly, there are class bubbles there too, of course.
But he wasn't trying to pass himself as "I am so working class" if anything he pointed out how bull this was.
Sample size of 1 obv. And yeah we do have cultural class, but this cap doffing pretend not rich when loaded to the hilt is pretty alien to the Dutch. And I think Norn Irish too from speaking to my colleagues.
JWestland-
What always strikes me is that in the UK (well England more than NI) what is called "middle class" is not 25-75% income percentile...it is more top 25% and sometimes top 10%.
Isn't middle class in GB the bigger percentage? To my mind lower-middle to upper-middle encompasses a pretty broad range of professional, specialist and retail services. But I guess it all depends on how you define it. Big house, small house, flat, owning, renting - I don't think any of those conditions excludes middle class. On the other hand if being working class means not having assets, then maybe you can't be middle class and not own property.
We have to redefine things though - eg education qualifications like A-levels and degrees used to be a signifier of middle class, but if half the younger population has them, it doesn't give you significantly more security, so are they really useful signifiers anymore?
hoefla
Interesting study just published on why the UK middle classes all want to be working class;
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038520982225