Telling a modest story: accounts of men's upward mobility from the National Child Development Study

While the pattern of social mobility in postwar Britain has been extensively studied, revealing considerable upward mobility, much less is known about the subjective dimension to mobility. In this article, we employ a new sample of in-depth interviews with 50-year old men from the National Child Development Study to examine in detail the link between objective mobility patterns and the way the upwardly mobile narrate their life trajectories. In contrast to the mobility ideology suggested by the Oxford mobility survey of the early 1970s, in which the upwardly mobile recognized and internalized their success as a project of the self, we report how members of this later generation of men with highly successful careers prefer instead to articulate 'modest' life stories. By treating the career as a narrative device, we are able to show how the disavowal of the dominant, linear hierarchical career model by these men allows them to tell particular and distinctive stories which establish their individuality and personhood, while, paradoxically, recognizing the cultural power of the dominant model. In particular, we highlight the use of 'linear contingent' narratives by these men, in which specific events, especially those connected with occupational and geographical transitions, are deployed as contingent thresholds to mark out key shifts and passages in their lives. We then compare their accounts with those of immobile and downwardly men, who instead deploy 'ghostly' stories, preoccupied by the past, or defensive accounts, displaying unease with their failure to live up to the expectations of the linear career model. Having shown that men's accounts of mobility are suffused with an awareness of their need to establish their own individuality through repudiating the social trope of the instrumental careerist, we conclude that the links between career identities and objective mobility patterns are not straightforward and need careful unravelling.     

Political attitudes, social participation and social mobility: a longitudinal analysis

It is often suggested that the political attitudes and social participation which have underpinned the welfare-state democracies have depended on large amounts of upward social mobility. The demographic heterogeneity of the service class, according to this view, induced in them a willingness to lead a common political project seeking to establish a common social citizenship. As the amount of upward mobility stagnates or even begins to fall, it has then further been claimed that there might emerge a degree of ideological closure in the service class that might erode their commitment to civic values. The 1958 British birth cohort study is used to investigate this question. Longitudinal data are invaluable here because they allow us to distinguish between two hypotheses: that upward mobility as such has induced in the service class certain attitudes and propensities to participate, or that the more important influence is the early socialization through which upwardly mobile people went. The conclusion of the analysis is that, although the civic values of the service class have not depended on upward mobility, this is much more true of cognitively able people than of others, and so is dependent on the somewhat meritocratic basis of selection into the salariat.     

Can cultural consumption increase future earnings? Exploring the economic returns to cultural capital

Cultural consumption is often viewed as a form of embodied cultural capital which can be converted into economic rewards (e.g., earnings) because such practices increase the likelihood of moving into more advantaged social positions. However, quantitative evidence supporting this theory remains uncertain because it is often unable to rule out alternative explanations. Cultural consumption appears to influence hiring decisions in some elite firms, in both the US and the UK, but it is unclear whether these processes are applicable to other professional occupations and other labour market processes, such as promotions. We examine these processes using data from Understanding Society, an individual‐level panel survey conducted in the UK, allowing us to explore whether cultural consumption predicts future earnings, upward social mobility and promotions. People who consume a larger number of cultural activities are more likely to earn higher wages in the future, to be upwardly socially mobile, and to be promoted. Cultural consumption, then, can function as cultural capital in some labour market settings, potentially contributing to the reproduction of income inequality between generations.     

Healing the Hidden Injuries of Class? Redemption Narratives,Aspirational Proxies,and Parents of Low‐Income,First‐Generation College Students

Existing scholarship has examined how low‐income individuals conceptualize their socioeconomically constrained positions in relation to the meritocratic ideologies and stratified mobility structures of the United States, but little is specifically known about how these individuals' ideas regarding their own status may be impacted by raising children who surpass their educational and occupational achievement levels. Drawing on interview data from both low‐income first‐generation (LIFG) college students and the parents of those students, this article examines how parents framed the achievements of their upwardly mobile, college‐going children in relation to their own experiences of socioeconomic, educational, and occupational constraint. Engaging qualitative understandings of the “hidden injuries of class,” the analysis demonstrates how parents of LIFG college students reconciled their own experiences of limited mobility despite hard work with their steadfast beliefs in meritocratic ideals by (1) invoking narratives of personal “redemption” from past “mistakes” or “failures” in relation to their children's educational accomplishments, and (2) conceptualizing their upwardly mobile children as “aspirational proxies” through whose accomplishments they measured their own success.     

Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?1

This paper investigates the claim that the shift from a selective to a comprehensive school system had a deleterious effect on social mobility in Great Britain. Using data from the National Child Development Study, we compare the chances, for both class and income mobility, of those who attended different kinds of school. Where media attention focuses exclusively on the chances for upward mobility of those children from lowly origins who were (or would have been) judged worthy of selection into a grammar school, we offer more rounded analyses. We match respondents in a way that helps us to distinguish those inequalities in mobility chances that are due to differences between children from those due to differences between the schools they attended; we look at the effects of the school system on the mobility chances of all children, not merely those from less advantaged origins; and we compare comprehensive- and selective-system schools, not merely comprehensive and grammar schools. After matching, we find, first, that going to a grammar school rather than a comprehensive does not make low-origin children more likely to be upwardly mobile but it helps them move further if they are; second, that grammar schools do not benefit working-class children, in terms of class mobility, more than they benefit service-class children, but, in terms of income mobility, such schools benefit low-income children somewhat more than they benefit higher-income children - that benefit relating only to rather modest and limited movements within the income distribution. Finally, however, the selective system as a whole yields no mobility advantage of any kind to children from any particular origins: any assistance to low-origin children provided by grammar schools is cancelled out by the hindrance suffered by those who attended secondary moderns. Overall, our findings suggest that comprehensive schools were as good for mobility as the selective schools they replaced.     

Paths to Mobility: The Mexican Second Generation at Work in a New Destination

Prior studies have shown that children of Mexican immigrants face structural challenges that threaten to obstruct their economic success in young adulthood. Drawing on 58 interviews with upwardly mobile young adult children of Mexican immigrants in a new immigrant destination in the U.S. South, I examine how a group of second‐generation Mexicans has made occupational gains during their early employment careers. They activated three resources in mobility‐promoting ways given the demographic, economic, and social characteristics of their community. The resources include parental support, advice and guidance from extrafamilial mentors, and bilingualism in English and Spanish.     

Confucius or Mozart? Community Cultural Wealth and Upward Mobility Among Children of Chinese Immigrants

Most studies of Chinese upward mobility focus on how immigrant community institutions sustain ethnic culture to foster educational success. In contrast, I analyze how community-based music schools develop a cultural strategy to guide immigrants to pursue enrollment in prestigious colleges by utilizing high cultural capital in classical music. Chinese immigrant families take advantage of information networks in these schools to develop a bonding form of social capital that allows not only middle-class families but also working-class families to redefine the meaning of ethnicity. This is theoretically surprising, because some theory predicts that middle class status is needed to benefit from such cultural capital. Through competence in Western classical music, Asian students signify their well roundedness, an achievement that goes beyond rote learning. Chinese families pursue this musical cultural strategy to incorporate themselves into mainstream educational institutions. Research on the strategic use of nonoppositional musical culture for educational mobility suggests the limitation of segmented assimilation theory.     

A longitudinal assessment of productivity in prominent sociology journals and departmental prestige

This paper tests the theory of cumulative advantage and disadvantage as it applies to the productivity and prestige of academic departments within sociology. The theory suggests that past perceptions of departmental prestige and cumulative records of faculty productivity are of greater significance than more recent levels of productivity in determining their perceived level of eminence within the discipline; a phenomenon due to the accumulation of past performance and recognition over time. The paper employs two widely disseminated measures of departmental eminence: the 1966 Cartter Report rankings and the 1982 Conference Boards assessments. Measures of departmental productivity are derived from cumulative publication histories of departments between 1936 and 1989 in three preeminent sociological journals; namely, theAmerican Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, andSocial Forces. The paper finds that while past accomplishments do not bear importantly on current perceptions of departmental prestige after controlling for the level of productivity maintained during the preceding decade, prior perceptions of prestige are strongly associated with current rankings. In addition, past perceptions of academic prestige are found to be highly stable, thereby creating the potential for a stratification hierarchy that allows for little mobility over time.     

Wie Nachhaltig Sind Die Bildungsaufstiege Wirklich?

In their article on the sustainability of educational upward mobility, Fuchs and Sixt (2007) investigate both the structure and the mechanisms of social inheritance of educational success across three generations. In theoretical respect the authors assume that children of educational climbers might have less educational chances than children of parents and grandparents with a long academic tradition. Utilizing data of the German Socio-Economic Panel as well as applying binary logistic regression they confirm their hypothesis calling the sustainability of educational expansion in question. In the present reanalysis data of the German Life History Study on educational histories of several generations are analysed by multinomial logistic regression. It can be demonstrated that the results by Fuchs and Sixt seems to be a statistical artefact because of multicollinearity. Additionally there are significant indications that educationally upward mobile parents are able to transfer their educational success to their children provided that these parents are also able to realize upward mobility in the status hierarchy or in the class structure. These both mechanisms of social mobility are essential for both the self-dynamic and the sustainability of the educational expansion in West Germany.     

Class inequalities in access to social capital in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires

this paper analyzes social class inequalities in access to social capital. Quantitative methodology was used with data from the PI-Clases “Reproduction and social mobility in family trajectories and life courses” survey, conducted in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires in 2015 (n = 1065). Social capital measures where derived from the Position Generator (Lin, 2001) to identify the volume, status and range of the respondent’s networks. Results show that there are class inequalities in access to social capital in terms of the number of contacts, mean status of contacts, range of contact’s status and highest status of contacts. Also, the working class is more heterogeneous in its access to social capital, suggesting it has a sector that has network ties with people from the middle class and a sector with lower social capital. The observed trend is of gradational differences between class strata, with more marked inequalities between the service, intermediate and working class, but with fluid class boundaries without social segregation. Also, social capital is conditioned by intergenerational mobility trajectory, showing a trend of elasticity in the class composition of social relationships. The upwardly mobile can increase their access to social capital but don’t reach the same level as the intergenerationally stable, while the downwardly mobile retain some social capital from their class origins.     

Has Migration Been Beneficial for Migrants and Their Children?

The study compares the social mobility and status attainment of first‐ and second‐generation Turks in nine Western European countries with those of Western European natives and with those of Turks in Turkey. It shows that the children of low‐class migrants are more likely to acquire a higher education than their counterparts in Turkey, making them more educationally mobile. Moreover, they successfully convert this education in the Western European labor market, and are upwardly mobile relative to the first generation. When comparing labor market outcomes of second generations relative to Turks in Turkey, however, the results show that the same level of education leads to a higher occupation in Turkey. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Female marital mobility within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: a log-linear analysis

A series of log-linear models predicting the exchange marital experiences of Irish wives are prevented for the Irish Republic. The best explanatory model is one in which the relationship between a husband's occupational status and that of his father-in-law remains homogeneous across age levels, Women show a marked propensity to marry husbands at a similar occupational status as that of their fathers and long-range upward or downward mobility across the manual/nonmanual divide is unlikely. This tendency towards endogamy is particularly pronounced within the two upper non-manual categories and the manual strata generally the same general model of homogeneous association holds for Northern Ireland across age levels and religious affiliation. In the North, however, more short-range mobility occurs, particularly between the two upper non-manual groups. Despite this the norm for both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is marital immobility rather than marital mobility with no evidence of a fundamental trend towards increased marital mobility. Furthermore. The mobility through marriage that did occur does not result in an overall net advantage for women.     

Crossing Borders,Crossing Seas: The Philippines,Gender and the Bounding of Cumulative Causation

In this study, we assess how the composition of migrant workers varies with migration prevalence within Filipino communities. Specifically, we test the hypothesis of past cumulative causation scholars that increased migration prevalence results in a decline in migrant selectivity. The Philippines has a social, political and geographical context that differs from that of many other countries characterized by high migration. In this study, we consider whether these different contexts and contingencies might alter the process by which the social phenomenon of cumulative causation occurs. Multiple fixed‐effects models were estimated at the municipality level, with the dependent variable in each model being a demographic characteristic related to the propensity to migrate: marital status, age, sex and years of education. We find, consistent with cumulative causation theory as posited by Douglas S. Massey, that increased migration prevalence did yield a decline in selectivity for education and marital status. However, migration prevalence had no effect on the gender composition of migrants, while time did impact the gender composition, suggesting sustained selectivity by gender attributable to global demand for specifically gendered, migrant labour.     

For Richer or for Poorer? Evidence from Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela

We analyze household income dynamics using longitudinal data from Indonesia, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Spain and Venezuela. In all four countries, households with the lowest reported base-year income experienced the largest absolute income gains. This result is robust to reasonable amounts of measurement error in two of the countries. In three of the four countries, households with the lowest predicted base-year income experienced gains at least as large as their wealthier counterparts. Thus, with one exception, the empirical importance of cumulative advantage, poverty traps, and skill-biased technical change was no greater than structural or macroeconomic changes that favored initially poor households in these four countries.     

Financial Assistance Patterns from Midlife Parents to Adult Children: A Test of the Cumulative Advantage Hypothesis

Young adults may receive financial assistance from midlife parents as they experience life course transitions often associated with establishing independent status, such as schooling, marriage or gaining full-time work. We used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (1992–2002) and hypothesized that adult children in the United States who received repeated financial transfers from midlife parents experienced cumulative advantages across time. We also examined the data using parental household characteristics to reinforce the importance of previous transfer behaviors. We found that the receipt of prior transfers, family structure and parental household income were the strongest determinants of the odds that parents gave financial assistance to adult children as both generations aged. The findings also supported the cumulative advantage theory due to the larger likelihood of continued transfers.     

Second generation decline? Children of immigrants,past and present--a reconsideration

"Is the contemporary second generation on the road to the upward mobility and assimilation that in retrospect characterized the second generation of earlier immigrations? Or are the American economic context and the racial origins of today's immigration likely to result in a much less favorable future for the contemporary second generation? While several recent papers have argued for the latter position, we suspect they are too pessimistic. We briefly review the second generation upward mobility in the past and then turn to the crucial comparisons between past and present."     

Social Mobility and Participation: The Dissociative and Socialization Hypotheses*

Information on participation with kin, with friends, and in voluntary associations was used to test two competing hypothescs of the effects of social mobility on social relations. The dissociative hypothesis maintains that mobility leads to social isolation, while the socialization hypothesis predicts an adptive outcome to mobility. The relationship is more complex than either position would suggest. Social mobility is associated with isolation from kin and friends, but only for the upwardly mobile. The findings obtained with voluntary associations support the socialization hypothesis in that the level of membership of the socially mobile is intermediate between the two stable groups. Social mobility has maladaptive consequences for more intimate and personal social relations, but it is integrative as far as participation in voluntary associations is concerned.     

Duality of departmental specializations and PhD exchange: A Weberian analysis of status in interaction using multilevel exponential random graph models (mERGM)

Weber proposes that lifestyle similarities preserve status by producing interactional closure between status similar actors. I investigate this theory on academic status hierarchies by conceptualizing sub-disciplinary specializations as departmental lifestyles and PhD exchange networks as interdepartmental interactions. Multilevel exponential random graph models (mERGM) reveal that the more specializations departments share, the more likely they are to exchange personnel. On the flip side, departments that do not share specializations are less likely to exchange doctoral candidates. Moreover, shared specializations are key determinants of closure between elite departments. These results support Weber’s theory and suggest that shared specializations preserve existing patterns of inequality between elite and non-elite departments.     

Social positions in influence networks

In this article we derive implications about social positions from a formal theory of social influence. The formal theory describes how, in a group of actors with heterogeneous initial opinions, a network of interpersonal influences enters into the formation of actors' settled opinions. We derive the following conclusions about a special form of structural equivalence. If actors are structurally equivalent in the network of interpersonal influences, then any dissimilarity of their initial opinions is reduced by the social influence process. If the social positions of actors are identical, i.e. if they have identical initial opinions and are structurally equivalent in the influence network, then they have identical opinions at equilibrium. If actors are not structurally equivalent in the network of interpersonal influences, then the social influence process does not necessarily reduce dissimilarities of initial opinions. We extend our analysis to consider automorphic equivalence.