Social Mobility in a Mid-Nineteenth Century French City

Abstract

This paper explores changing patterns of class mobility in the city of Toulouse, France during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Class categories are used to map out mobility patterns across locations in the social relations of production rather than across locations in status hierarchies. Data on patterns of intergenerational mobility derived from the marriage records of 1830 and 1872 are used to document the rigidity of class boundaries at different points in time, the sources of recruitment for newly emerging working-class positions, and the impact of changes in production relations upon the character and meaning of mobility patterns. Changes in mobility patterns are situated within the historical context of the changing social relations of production that marked the rise of early industrial capitalism. The final section of the paper provides some hypotheses regarding the impact of changing mobility patterns upon the process of class formation.