In their article “Gebotene Scham” (Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, 4/2025), Carolin Rocks and Elgen Sauerborn analyze autobiographical accounts of class mobility and show how these narratives tend to foreground shame as a key emotional experience.

At the same time, they argue that this perspective is too narrow. The emotional landscape of social mobility is far more complex, including pride, hope, ambivalence, and alienation. Drawing on literary analysis, they demonstrate that shame is not simply personal, but part of a socially structured emotional repertoire that such texts help to reproduce.