Abstract
Since 2010, the language of social mobility has been increasingly utilised by UK politicians from across the political spectrum to denote a commitment to ‘fair access’ to opportunity in both education and the professions. Within this policy discourse, the default understanding of inequality is premised on a narrow notion of access to elite education and employment positions, where a deeper understanding of the politics of social reproduction and inequality, or any meaningful emphasis on redistribution, is absent. The social mobility agenda is axiomatically an equality of opportunity agenda where the focus is on ‘levelling up’ those who are considered to be falling behind. Its focus on opportunity to the detriment of outcome thus rules out considerations of structural solutions to inequalities. In this article, we unpack the discourses of social mobility that are prevalent in recent UK government papers and political talk, with a specific focus on the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) in order to consider how these shape policy approaches to education and labour market participation. We argue that the presiding ‘race to the top’ mentality undermines the very equality that the social mobility agenda claims to be seeking to achieve, and in doing so we implicate the SMC in purveying contradictory understandings of mobility that compound and conceal existing inequalities. Through a focus on graduate employment, we problematise the role of higher education in the promotion of social mobility. We consider the role of employers participating in the Social Mobility Employer Index and expose the contradictions between the performance of social mobility and the reality of corporate practices that entrench social inequalities. Our work underscores the need for a new political conversation about social mobility and a redirection of attendant education and employment policy to focus on dismantling rather than reinforcing social hierarchies.
Highlights
The 2010s were a decade in which government discourse around inequality was centred on social mobility
Whilst we acknowledge that the ground of political talk on social mobility is shifting, we find it useful to review its legacy as a means of understanding what has led to current political positioning
The commission has no direct powers in formulating policy but it has been key in setting the agenda for politicians when developing social mobility strategy, and whilst this is potentially important to a number of different governmental departments, its history and position of attachment to the DfE have resulted in education being tied with understandings of social mobility and seen as central to potential solutions to mobility issues. We argue that this has allowed a warped understanding of social mobility that has fuelled the slippery discourses, definitions, and directions highlighted in the preceding sections of this article
Summary
Citation for published item: Ingram, Nicola and Gamsu, Sol 'Talking the Talk of Social Mobility: the political performance of a misguided agenda.', Sociological Research Online. Since 2010 the language of social mobility has been increasingly utilised by UK politicians from across the political spectrum to denote a commitment to 'fair access' to opportunity in both education and the professions. Within this policy discourse the default understanding of inequality is premised on a narrow notion of access to elite education and employment positions, where a deeper understanding of the politics of social reproduction and inequality, or any meaningful emphasis on redistribution, is absent. Our work underscores the need for a new political conversation about social mobility, and a redirection of attendant education and employment policy to focus on dismantling rather than reinforcing social hierarchies
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