Social Mobility for the 21st Century

Social Mobility for the 21st Century

Author: Steph Lawler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1351996797

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Social Mobility for the 21st Century addresses experiences of social mobility, and the detailed processes through which entrenched, intergenerationally transmitted privilege is reproduced. Contributions include (but are not limited to) family relationships, students’ encounters with higher education, narratives of work careers, and ‘mobility identities’. The book intends to challenge both the framework of the more traditional approach, and the politicisation of mobility which casts ‘mobility’ as a possession, a commodity or a character trait, and threatens to castigate the ‘non-mobile’ as carrying a personal responsibility for their situation. This book presents critical analyses of routes into social mobility, the experience of social mobility, and the political and social implications of social mobility’s ‘panacea’ status. Drawing on the work of established scholars and more recent entrants, the chapters offer a fresh look at social mobility, opening up the topic to a wider readership among the profession and beyond, and stimulating further debate. This book will appeal to higher level students and scholars of sociology alike, as well as having a broad cross-disciplinary appeal.


Social Mobility in Developing Countries

Social Mobility in Developing Countries

Author: Vegard Iversen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-12-17

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 0192650734

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Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves-which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines—typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?


Poverty and Progress

Poverty and Progress

Author: Stephan THERNSTROM

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0674044312

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Embedded in the consciousness of Americans throughout much of the country's history has been the American Dream: that every citizen, no matter how humble his beginnings, is free to climb to the top of the social and economic ladder. Poverty and Progress assesses the claims of the American Dream against the actual structure of economic and social opportunities in a typical nineteenth century industrial community--Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here is local history. With the aid of newspapers, census reports, and local tax, school, and savings bank records Stephan Thernstrom constructs a detailed and vivid portrait of working class life in Newburyport from 1850 to 1880, the critical years in which this old New England town was transformed into a booming industrial city. To determine how many self-made men there really were in the community, he traces the career patterns of hundreds of obscure laborers and their sons over this thirty year period, exploring in depth the differing mobility patterns of native-born and Irish immigrant workmen. Out of this analysis emerges the conclusion that opportunities for occupational mobility were distinctly limited. Common laborers and their sons were rarely able to attain middle class status, although many rose from unskilled to semiskilled or skilled occupations. But another kind of mobility was widespread. Men who remained in lowly laboring jobs were often strikingly successful in accumulating savings and purchasing homes and a plot of land. As a result, the working class was more easily integrated into the community; a new basis for social stability was produced which offset the disruptive influences that accompanied the first shock of urbanization and industrialization. Since Newburyport underwent changes common to other American cities, Thernstrom argues, his findings help to illuminate the social history of nineteenth century America and provide a new point of departure for gauging mobility trends in our society today. Correlating the Newburyport evidence with comparable studies of twentieth century cities, he refutes the popular belief that it is now more difficult to rise from the bottom of the social ladder than it was in the idyllic past. The "blocked mobility" theory was proposed by Lloyd Warner in his famous "Yankee City" studies of Newburyport; Thernstrom provides a thorough critique of the "Yankee City" volumes and of the ahistorical style of social research which they embody.


We Have Never Been Middle Class

We Have Never Been Middle Class

Author: Hadas Weiss

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1788733940

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Taking apart the ideology of the "middle class" Tidings of a shrinking middle class in one part of the world and its expansion in another absorb our attention, but seldom do we question the category itself. We Have Never Been Middle Class proposes that the middle class is an ideology. Tracing this ideology up to the age of financialization, it exposes the fallacy in the belief that we can all ascend or descend as a result of our aspirational and precautionary investments in property and education. Ethnographic accounts from Germany, Israel, the USA and elsewhere illustrate how this belief orients us, in our private lives as much as in our politics, toward accumulation-enhancing yet self-undermining goals. This original meshing of anthropology and critical theory elucidates capitalism by way of its archetypal actors.


Nurturing Mobilities

Nurturing Mobilities

Author: Claire Maxwell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1000463095

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Nurturing Mobilities employs new empirical material and an innovative theoretical framing to bring new clarity to why families travel today – and what happens when they do. The authors argue that an imperative to ‘think with mobility’ and to ‘aspire to be mobile’ shapes identities, futures, and family practices. Drawing on data that examines family travel practices – typically short-term trips – across the working-, middle-, and globally mobile middle-classes, Nurturing Mobilities describes how families travel, why they travel, and the role young family members play in curating family travel. Vitally, it examines the two biggest contemporary issues in global mobility: COVID-19 and climate change. How has COVID-19 changed travel motivations in a world beset by lockdowns and diminished finances? How are concerns around climate change, and engagements with global citizenship education, changing family travel practices? Nurturing Mobilities illuminates new ways in which social class divergence is forged through movements across borders. The authors’ theoretically inter-disciplinary approach delivers a full analysis of the apparently divergent processes that differentiate family travel along social class lines, yet also allow travel to play a core role in social mobility. This book is a vital resource for scholars and students studying mobility, globalisation, social class, and climate change engagement.


The Son Also Rises

The Son Also Rises

Author: Gregory Clark

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0691168377

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"How much of our fate is tied to the status of our parents and grandparents? How much does this influence our children? More than we wish to believe! While it has been argued that rigid class structures have eroded in favor of greater social equality, The Son Also Rises proves that movement on the social ladder has changed little over eight centuries. Using a novel technique -- tracking family names over generations to measure social mobility across countries and periods -- renowned economic historian Gregory Clark reveals that mobility rates are lower than conventionally estimated, do not vary across societies, and are resistant to social policies. The good news is that these patterns are driven by strong inheritance of abilities and lineage does not beget unwarranted advantage. The bad news is that much of our fate is predictable from lineage. Clark argues that since a greater part of our place in the world is predetermined, we must avoid creating winner-take-all societies."--Jacket.


Social Mobility

Social Mobility

Author: Lee Elliot Major

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2018-09-27

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0241317037

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What are the effects of decreasing social mobility? How does education help - and hinder - us in improving our life chances? Why are so many of us stuck on the same social rung as our parents? Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society. This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.


Developing New National Data on Social Mobility

Developing New National Data on Social Mobility

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2013-12-13

Total Pages: 71

ISBN-13: 0309296013

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Developing New National Data on Social Mobility summarizes a workshop convened in June 2013 to consider options for a design for a new national survey on social mobility. The workshop was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and convened by the Committee on Population and the Committee on National Statistics Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council. Scientific experts from a variety of social and behavioral disciplines met to plan a new national survey on social mobility that will provide the first definitive evidence on recent and long-term trends in social mobility, with the objectives of coming to an understanding of the substantial advances in the methods and statistics for modeling mobility, in survey methodology and population-based survey experiments, in opportunities to merge administrative and survey data, and in the techniques of measuring race, class, education, and income. The workshop also focused on documenting the state of understanding of the mechanisms through which inequality is generated in the past four decades. In the absence of a survey designed and dedicated to the collection of information to assess the status of social mobility, a wide variety of data sources designed for other purposes have been pressed into service in order to illuminate the state of social mobility and its trends. Developing New National Data on Social Mobility discusses the key decision points associated with launching a new national level survey of social mobility. This report considers various aspects of a major new national survey, including identifying relevant new theoretical perspectives and technical issues that have implications for modeling, measurement, and data collection.


Moving

Moving

Author: Andy Hargreaves

Publisher: Solution Tree

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781951075019

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"In Moving: A Memoir of Education and Social Mobility author Andy Hargreaves tells the story of his working-class roots, his education, and his experiences with social mobility. Beginning with his youth in the small working-class town of Accrington in Northern England and ending with his experiences at University, the author relates his journey through the education system and all that education has done for him. The author describes what it means to be working-class, his personal successes and failures, and the ways that education allowed him to lift himself out of poverty. However, he also describes the ways that many others were left behind and never given the chance to be socially mobile. The author believes that there are lessons that can be learned from his experience of social mobility and that these lessons can be applied to society at large. In particular, educators can use these lessons to encourage and support students' social mobility and increase the number of students who can become socially mobile. These lessons can also be used to create schools that are kinder to working-class students and to students who are socially mobile. Readers will connect to the engaging, heart-felt story of the author's life and, through it, learn about the reality of social mobility, how it is experienced, and how it can be supported"--


Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Thomas Piketty

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-08-14

Total Pages: 817

ISBN-13: 0674979850

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What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.