Pursuing upward transformation: The construction of a progressing self among dominated consumers

Research on identity projects shows how consumers increase status through identity work. However, even though change and transformation are latent constructs in this literature, researchers seldom frame studies in such way. Studies on dominated consumers, by their turn, tend to represent reproduction and continuity, rather than change. We address these theoretical oversights through the analysis of the transformational character of identity work among dominated consumers. To do so, we conducted a qualitative study of two cohorts of lower-class students enrolled in a Distance Learning higher education program in Brazil. Drawing on the notion of possible selves, we found that, more than paving the grounds toward a desired outcome, students' identity work produce an internally persuasive process of moral transformation. Through an increased agency over their future, students reinvent themselves as progressing individuals, effectively breaking up with social determinations and paving the grounds to objective social mobility.