Social Mobility

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David Glass 1949 LSE

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Capitalism allowed high mobility. But this wascompatible with high social inequality, due to inequality of conditions. Considerable amount of relatively short-range mobilitycoupled with a higher degree of rigidity and self-recruitment at the extremes.

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Influences on social mobility

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Gender – women have shorter working-careers.Most working-class women have to work. Horizontal segregation for them though. Educated middle-class women have upward social mobility. Ethnicity; different regions and opportunities according to employment in areas. Job categories more fluid - transferable skills needed. Cultural capital.

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Heath- early discussions of social mobility

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Marx believed upward mobility would strengthen thehold of the ruling class and thus serve as a stabilizing, anti-revolutionaryprocess. Pareto: elites inevitable, but need for elites to recruit from below. Sorokin: schools do not change people, but labels and gradeschildren for the labour market.

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Heath: Who's Who

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If elite membership were independent of social origin,only 0.15% of ‘Who’s Who’ would be expected to have had fathers also in ‘Who’sWho’ - 11% did.

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Abercrombie & Ward: social mobility and Nuffield mobility survey

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Social mobility: movement up or down a system ofhierarchically ordered economic and social positions; has always been seen as asystem of classes in Britain. Nuffield Mobility study, 1972, Goldthorpe et al.: seven occupational classes.This study found moreinter-generational social mobility in Britain since WWII than might beexpected. But much of the upward mobility into the service class was merely aconsequence of the number of positions in the service class having increased(‘more room at the top’).

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Abercrombie & Ward: four reservations of the study

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Four reservations of the study: the most exclusiveof social groups received no attention; women ignored- women’s experience of social mobility is very different to men’s, due to occupational sex segregation women fill disproportionately few higher professional, skilled manual or petit bourgeois positions; implicit and moralcondemnation of restricted opportunities in Britain has been challenged - Saunders: argues that ability and effort determine who shall fill the privileged positions, so the existing distribution can be said to be fair; oldand perhaps outdated.

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Abercrombie & Ward: deconstruction of these

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Who's who can supplement lack of elite. Little evidence around shows that chances of upwardmobility for women skewed by class of origin in the same way as for men. Saunders - depends on the definition of the term‘meritocratic’; contested conception. Evidence has been done, showing that since the periodto the early 1990s nothing of significance has changed.

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Goldthorpe - disproves thesis

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There has been more mobility in advancedsocieties, particularly Britain, than has been recognized by these theories(closure, buffer zone, counterbalance). Where such structural shifts occur, itis possible for the pattern of social mobility to change substantially, withoutnecessarily any change in the total amount of mobility/ the degree of openness.

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Erikson & Goldthorpe

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Within particular societies, mobility regimes show ahigh degree of constancy over time and, in some, such as Great Britain…forperiods extending back to the first half of the 20th century. The specific educational and occupationalgoals that young people pursue are best understood in relation to theirclass origins.

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Critiques of Goldthorpe et al.

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Working class male choicesnot simply rational; opposition to dominant codes of masculinity and cultureopposed to discipline of school system. Functionalisttheory of industrial society – expansion in need for professional jobsreplacing emphasis on ascription with achievement. Also, Saunders- studies have failed to account for ability.

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Saunders - criticism of relative mobility rates

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Sociologists have emphasized ‘relative’ ratherthan ‘absolute’ mobility rates. But there are problems with using‘relative’ mobility rates. Ignoressignificance of changes in the structure of occupational system; issues withhow data on relative mobility rates have been interpreted; use ofrelative measures entails an implausible criterion of social fairness.

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Saunders - intelligence not class

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Nuffield mobility project, took some account of ability through IQ: found that 72% service classboys and 24% working class boys attended some selective secondary school; 58% and 28% respectively expectedto do so on basis of average IQ scores, had system been meritocratic. The class advantage ofservice class children ending up in selective and working class children endingup in non-selective schools is accounted for by differences in IQ levels.So most of apparent ‘classbias’ actually amounts to differences in intelligence.

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Saunders - Heath showed factors more important than class of origins

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Heath attempted to work out strengths ofdifferent factors in determining eventual social class destinations. Strongest links: education andfirst job; then education and present job; then first job and presentjob (0.25). Coefficientbetween father’s occupation and son’s present job low.

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Saunders - criticism of sociology and Goldthorpe

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Britain not perfect meritocracy, though it is stillmore so than believed - stems from Glass' survey. Part of this is from British sociology beingstrongly based towards the Left. ForGoldthorpe, was not about whether large numbers of people were mobile, butwhether working-class children had improved their chances of occupationalsuccess relative to the chances enjoyed by children born into higher socialclasses.

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Saunders - NCDS survey

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NCDS canprovide us with invaluable source of information on social mobility patterns inperiod 1958-1991. Dropping cases not in full-time employment.Fromthis: 52% had become inter-generationally mobile; over 1/3 of middle classchildren downwardly mobile, with 25% of working-class children moving intomiddle class. Class IV/V children entering the middle-class havesignificantly higher average ability scores than class I/II children leavingit. Particularly striking since IQ tests may have favoured those frommiddle-class homes.

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Goldthorpe et al. - criticism of Saunders

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They take a wider and in turn a probablymore representative coverage of respondents than does Saunders by including inour analyses those who were not in employment when interviewed at age 33. Children of disadvantaged class origins have todisplay far more merit than do children of more advantaged origins in order toattain similar class positions.

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Marshall et al. - criticism of educational market and Britain as class society

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Increasing merit-selection in labour market offset bydecreasing merit-selection in educational market. Among individuals at lowest level of educationalattainment, those having service-class origins are four times more likely toachieve service-class employment than their working-class peers. Thereis differentiation according to class origins within the salary itself. Overall, Britain is considerablyless educationally meritocratic a society than most of its industrialized,European counterparts.

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Marshall et al. - Gender and education

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Sex-segregation also differs across educational levels. Unqualified or poorly-qualified women are less likely to arrive at lower-salary positions than male peers, but more likely to do so when they have obtained advanced or degree-level qualifications.

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Marshall et al. Class disparities in educational attainment

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The result of: labelling, by middle class teachers, of working-class children as‘under achievers’; prejudice on the part of educational authorities in trackingworking-class children into less ambitious/resourced streams, schools or colleges;organizational ethos of schools with curriculum; exams favouring middle classchildren - etc. Others have focused on way material disadvantages of those borninto working-class homes manifest themselves as handicaps to educationalachievement.

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Marshall et al. Readjustment from working class

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Also may owe to ‘realistic’ adjustment on part ofworking class to their circumstances. There is some evidence that, among men with similarcredentials and skills, those from advantaged backgrounds tend to seek jobs inhigher-status occupations than do others having relatively disadvantaged socialorigins.

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Marshall et al. Issues with Saunders and issues with education alone

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Issues with Saunders: extent to which IQ testimproves upon educational attainment as source of ‘merit’ - argument that test resultspartly a function of socialization. Issues with educational achievements alone: there aremany jobs for which school or college qualifications are less relevant than areother possibly independent attributes, growing number of e.g. personal-service occupations.