Social change and social mobility

Abstract

In the first part of this chapter, I will discuss selected social, economic and political evolutions that might have affected social mobility over the last century. Between the turn of the century and the demise of socialism, the world experienced not only some of the most gruesome catastrophes but also several technological and social revolutions. Following Hobsbawm (1994), one can describe this century as mainly made up of four decades of crises (the two World Wars and the Great Depression), nearly three golden decades of rising equality and living standards (Golden Age or Trente Glorieuse) and three decades of economic crises and global insecurity.