How does CWP define class?

How does CWP define class? 

The Class Work Project is in part a response to the need to better understand, clarify and define what ‘class’ is in the 21st century and what this means/feels like/is characterised. Learning from, rather than rejecting, earlier definitions and responses to terms such as ‘working-class’, ‘land-owning, ‘middle class’ people, in our workshops we choose to use terminology which reflects people's current and inherited capital. Using Bourdieu’s explanation of types of capital (social, transitional, cultural and economic), we work with organisations, individuals, groups and communities to explore the ways in which their lives have been enhanced or disprivileged by access/ lack of access to these types of capital. We believe this allows for a more transparent reflection of people's class positions; through their assessment of their relationship to capital. CWP advocates the idea that people, because of how they are valued/devalued under capitalism, have different relationships to class and capital. For example, feminised bodies, poor people, migrants and people of colour are often, and have often been forced to perform the reproductive labour needed across the globe that is essential to the huge accumulation of wealth that only the very privileged minority have access to. 

We are also firm believers in that with class, comes the various forms of capital above and these capitals form our class experiences. Hard to define and difficult relationships to often binary ways of understanding class positions is common, but also crucial to cross-class relationships. By exploring class within this framework, we can see how someone who grew up in working class environment might still feel disprivileged even though their position now reflects a different relationship to capital. It can also help to understand how someone from a well-resourced background who now finds themselves working as a barista as they feel they cannot find appropriate paid work in their field of interest, is in a very different position when using this framework.