Mobility: Social

Abstract

Social mobility is the movement in time of individuals, families, or other social units between positions of varying advantage in the system of social stratification of a society. While classical authors have seen social mobility primarily in its contribution to class formation or status group formation, recent research concentrates on identifying the degree to which individuals' social opportunities in life are conditioned by their social origins (conditions of life in the parental family) and on specifying the individual, institutional, and societal factors responsible for it. Studies of the process of status attainment show that the social status or prestige level of a job attained by a person at a given point in his or her career strongly depends on earlier job achievements, educational qualifications, and on parents' status. Education tends to be identified as the main determinant and as the core link between social origin and attained position. Studies of intergenerational class mobility analyze the patterns of transition from parental social (origin) class to individuals' own (destination) class and show that class destinations heavily depend on class origins. Measured in terms of relative rates of mobility a high degree of cross-national similarity and constancy over time is found in the pattern of social fluidity among industrial and postindustrial societies. In contrast, absolute rates of mobility vary considerably across societies and time.