Evaluation of sensitive period, accumulation, and social mobility mechanisms linking neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation to mental health during adolescence and young adulthood: A life-course, causal inference approach.

Family socioeconomic status (SES) is a key determinant of adolescent depressive symptoms. However, prior research has largely relied on static and objective indicators, with limited attention to life-course dynamics in parental occupational status and subjective socioeconomic status (SSS). Evidence from a life-course perspective remains scarce. This study applies a life-course framework to examine how dynamic changes in parental occupational status and SSS are associated with adolescent depressive symptoms. Data were drawn from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) from 2010 to 2020 (N=1143). Participants were observed across three developmental stages (ages 5-8, 11-14, and 15-18). Parental occupational status, parental SSS, and adolescent depressive symptoms were assessed at each stage. A structured life-course modeling approach was used, embedding parental occupational and SSS indicators within saturated models. Competing life-course hypotheses were compared using partial F-tests. Over half of adolescents experienced low parental occupational status or low parental SSS during at least one developmental stage. The association between parental occupational status and adolescent depressive symptoms was primarily explained by social mobility, particularly reflecting the adverse influence of downward occupational mobility. In contrast, parental SSS exhibited sensitive period and cumulative exposure patterns rather than mobility effects. Low paternal SSS during late adolescence was significantly associated with depressive symptoms, whereas maternal SSS showed both sensitive period and accumulation effects. Dynamic changes in parental occupational status and SSS, especially during early life, play an important role in shaping adolescent depressive symptoms. Early identification of socioeconomic disadvantage and timely interventions may help reduce depressive symptoms among adolescents.

Among the foremost scandals surrounding Indian start-ups has been the defrauding of students by loan schemes embedded into edtech platforms. This paper identifies the over-reliance of edtech business models on short-term venture capital as a determining factor in their aggressive blitz-scaling and monetization strategies. The logics of venture capital in India thereby determine an unstable mode of platform capitalism primarily driven by predatory leverage. This dynamic was particularly evident in the rapid rise and demise of edtech-fintech combines seeking to exploit the increasing shortfall in meeting tertiary education demand. In this instance, I argue that the over-reliance on venture capital is compounded by a deeper crisis of social mobility, where the hollowing out of public education is intended to impel its assetization and financialization.

The secrets they never taught you: Threshold returns to human capital and intergenerational mobility

Socioeconomic homogeneity in acquaintance networks: Occupational prestige, education, and intergenerational mobility

The American dream revisited: intergenerational education mobility in immigrant households

This study investigates how a 12-month economic mobility intervention, Mothers Mobility Program (MMP), in Charlotte, NC, fosters usable social capital among single mothers facing systemic, financial, and personal stressors often associated with complex trauma. Using Braun and Clarke's (2006) Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), our interdisciplinary team conducted and analyzed interviews with a subgroup of 20 program mothers (ages 19-44) from six cohorts (N = 70) who completed MMP between 2021 and 2024. The analysis revealed the formation of bonding and bridging social capital among participants. These processes were sequenced and interdependent: bonding ties, fostered through program offerings and identity-affirming spaces, first created trust and safety, which then enabled bridging connections to external resources. Shared staff-client identities influenced engagement, but structural barriers limited the usability of newly formed networks. This study enhances social capital theory by detailing how single mothers experiencing chronic trauma develop, access, and utilize social resources within program settings, along with the program components that support these processes. When place-based programs intentionally sequence bonding before bridging, provide identity-affirming supports, and align external resources with community strengths, these processes become mutually reinforcing. Shared staff identity fosters trust and accelerates engagement, but structural barriers shape whether new connections translate into tangible benefits. Without this integrated strategy and attention to sequencing, efforts to build sustainable social capital and promote community resilience may be less effective in contexts of persistent inequities.

Moving out and moving down: Vietnamese migrants navigating downward social mobility in Australia

Rotten roots: the colonial genealogies of Irish enslavers

ABSTRACT Moving beyond dominant historiographical narratives that frame the Treaty of Amritsar (1846) as a moment of political rupture, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the Sikh period (1819–1846) and the Dogra regime to foreground the patterns of employment, unemployment, and precarity in Kashmir. Drawing on archival records, administrative reports, and contemporary writings, it argues that, despite its rent-seeking character, the Sikh administration largely operated through a pragmatic logic of governance to incorporate local intermediaries. In contrast, the Dogra rule gradually institutionalised more structured forms of exclusion, by increasingly privileging non-local elements, particularly Punjabis, in bureaucracy. This shift was closely linked to the growing importance of education as a prerequisite for bureaucratic entry, even as access to educational opportunities remained highly unequal. Situating unemployment within the broader political economy of governance, the paper further analyses the emergence of the ‘State Subject’ category as a mechanism through which access to employment, resources, and social mobility came to be regulated.

Despite extensive research on upward mobility, the psychological consequences of perceived downward mobility remain understudied. Across two cross-sectional and two experimental studies (N = 2,819), conducted in high-income, post-industrial economies, we investigated the effects of perceived upward and downward mobility on status anxiety and well-being. Across designs, downward mobility beliefs consistently increased status anxiety, which in turn mediated harmful effects on life satisfaction and related well-being outcomes. Upward mobility beliefs reduced status anxiety and produced a positive indirect effect on life satisfaction only in an experimental study with U.S. participants, but it yielded inconsistent effects across the remaining three studies. Our findings suggest that both upward and downward beliefs influence well-being through status anxiety, but the effects of downward mobility beliefs are stronger and more consistent.

Europe occupies a powerful place in African migrant imaginaries as a site of economic redemption, social mobility, and structural stability. This paper interrogates the idea of Europe as a space of “better opportunities” for African migrants. While Europe offers measurable economic advantages; higher wages, social welfare systems, and remittance potential, these opportunities are unevenly distributed and embedded within racialized labour hierarchies and restrictive border regimes. African migrant narratives have increasingly challenged this long-held imagination of Europe. This paper examines how Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street and Helon Habila’s Travellers dismantle the myth of Europe by representing migration as a condition of prolonged exile, disillusionment, and existential unhomeliness. Drawing on the postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist thoughts, the paper argues that both novels reconfigure Europe not as a destination but as a liminal space of economic exploitation, bureaucratic violence, and psychic displacement. While Unigwe foregrounds the gendered commodification of African female bodies within sexual economies, Habila exposes the precarity of refugee masculinity and the endless temporariness of migrant life. Through close textual analysis, this study demonstrates that the migrant dream collapses into a crisis of belonging in which “home” becomes unattainable, fragmented, or reimagined beyond geography. The paper contributes to migration studies by reading exile as a shared yet gender-differentiated condition and by positioning contemporary African migrant fiction as a counter-narrative to Eurocentric fantasies of mobility and freedom.

Geographic Information Science (GIScience) offers promising data and tools to innovatively capture and analyze human circadian rhythms across space and time at unprecedented scales, yet its potential remains underexplored. This systematic investigation examines 60 studies published between 2001 and 2024 that applied GIScience to investigate circadian rhythm patterns and their associations with social-environmental factors. Most studies relied on survey or sensor-based data, with limited use of emerging sources such as social media, mobility, web applications, and remote sensing. We found that previous research largely emphasized individual- and population-level monitoring, particularly at the city scale with minute-level temporal resolutions. Traditional statistical approaches dominated, while spatial analysis and advanced spatial-temporal modeling techniques were rarely applied. Findings highlight that both geographic attributes (e.g., latitude, longitude, altitude) and social-environmental conditions (e.g., light, noise, socioeconomic status) exert spatially heterogeneous influences on circadian rhythms, underscoring the need for greater integration of GIScience data and methods into circadian research.

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to entrepreneurial history by addressing our limited micro-level understanding of how small, provincial cultural enterprises operated outside London in nineteenth-century Britain. While research on Victorian entrepreneurship and family business has focused largely on large manufacturers and metropolitan firms, far less is known about how entrepreneurial processes unfolded within small, local cultural enterprises. Using a microhistorical approach, the paper reconstructs the development of the Glasgow pianoforte business of James S. Kerr using census data, post office directories, newspapers, music publications, and probate records. The analysis traces the firm’s evolution from piano tuning into retailing and music publishing and examines how entrepreneurial activity was enacted through skill recombination, diversification, and household-based organization. The study shows how a small provincial enterprise generated social mobility, expanded geographically, and created an enduring family business legacy despite operating within a fragmented and service-intensive market. By demonstrating how entrepreneurial processes can be reconstructed from non-financial archival sources, the paper highlights the importance of place, embeddedness, and small-scale enterprise in the Victorian cultural economy. More broadly, it illustrates how microhistorical analysis can enhance our understanding of entrepreneurship as a set of processes through which economic and social change was enacted over time.

Persisting social disadvantage is associated with poor health and higher mortality. Increasing social mobility is, therefore, a major policy goal in the United Kingdom and other Western nations. However, the extent to which mortality is attenuated by upward social mobility is unclear, evidence from lifecourse studies suggests the persisting effects of early disadvantage. We sought to examine the relationship between intercensal social mobility and all-cause mortality. Census returns from three waves of the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (1991 n = 439553; 2001 n = 446573; 2011 n = 480031) linked with mortality data. Using census data on 'educational attainment', 'occupational social class', 'housing tenure', and 'household car access' we derived an index of individual and household-level disadvantage and examined intercensal social mobility and all-cause mortality between 1991-2001 and 2001-2011. At each census point, all-cause mortality was positively associated with increasing social disadvantage. Relative to the least disadvantaged at each census, populations in the most disadvantaged areas recorded (hazard ratios = 3.23 (95% CI 2.49, 4.19); HR = 5.09 (4.21, 6.17), and HR = 5.30 (4.56, 6.16)) for 1991, 2001, and 2011, respectively. Compared with the socially static groups, those with generally downward social mobility showed an excess mortality, while mortality in the upwardly social mobility groups was generally lower than (or similar to) those in more socially static groups. Perhaps predictably, all-cause mortality was strongly associated with downward social mobility across time periods. Of greater concern, the Hazards associated with downward mobility appear to intensify over time. Moreover, increased social mobility appears to have little positive impact on mortality.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the trafficking of women into the sex trade under the guise of employment opportunities in the showbiz industry in Pakistan. I argue that in the context of Pakistan, the rhetoric of ‘showbiz jobs’ is often used as a cover for women’s trafficking. I interviewed twenty rescued victims residing in Lahore to gain a deeper understanding of the trafficking process, the complex criminal networks, and the experiences of the survivors. Thematic content analysis of the data drawn from the in-depth interviews was conducted through the lens of critical feminist theory to examine how patriarchal power structures and economic vulnerability contribute to women′s exploitation within trafficking networks. There is limited evidence-based research documenting instances of such human exploitation, thereby demonstrating a significant need for survivor-centred emperical research. The project contributes to feminist scholarship by examining survivors′ voices and focusing on the legal and policy responses to human trafficking. It also highlights the role of international treaties and state-led anti-trafficking initiatives. The findings reveal that trafficking networks exploit women's aspirations for employment, economic security, and social mobility, thereby hindering accountability and impeding legal intervention. The study concludes that stronger institutional oversight could significantly strengthen the country′s response to human trafficking.

The field of the sociogenomics of inequalities would benefit from discussing what its findings and ambitions mean for core theories of social stratification and mobility. Do sociologists need to reconsider their critique to structural-functionalist theory of stratification, and its neo-classical economic allies, that emphasise efficient sorting of individuals to social positions? Or do their interpretations of genetic correlates of inequality need to include reference to constructivist processes that have defined the genetic mix that has come to be rewarded in a society? I argue that, with the current sociogenomics methods, it is hard to disentangle these theories, which are however fundamentally different regarding the nature and structure of social stratification. Using simulations that distinguish context-dependent from context-independent genetic variability, it is shown that the field always needs to make untestable assumptions about the nature of genetic differences.

ABSTRACT This study examines how marginalised communities in India strategically use identity as a means of social mobility. While major theories of recognition politics, such as those of Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, were largely developed in Western liberal contexts, this paper argues that in post-colonial welfare states like India, identity claims are shaped not only by the search for dignity and respect but also by access to state benefits, reservation policies, and official recognition. To explain this, the study introduces two concepts: Symbolic Status Movements (SSM), where communities seek higher social status through cultural emulation, including Sanskritisation, and Legal Status Movements (LSM), where communities mobilise for official state recognition such as SC, ST, or OBC status. Drawing on Social Identity Theory, Weber’s class-status-party framework, and Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of different forms of capital, the paper conceptualises identity as flexible and responsive to changing institutional conditions rather than fixed or primordial. Through four case studies — the Rajbanshis, Naths, Matuas, and Kudmi-Mahatos — the paper develops the concept of institutionally responsive identity: the argument that identity politics in India operates through constant adjustment to changing institutional conditions, rather than through a simple linear path of social mobility.

In recent years, sociological interest in the study of social class-particularly its subjective dimensions-has intensified. This article contributes to this growing body of literature by focusing on Poland as a case within the Central and Eastern European region. It emphasizes the role of historical context and family histories in shaping processes of class mobility and class reproduction, and examines these processes from a biographical perspective. Drawing on a comparative analysis of biographical pathways of upward mobility and reproduction, we introduce two analytical concepts naming the historical moments/processes potentially reshaping individuals' class histories: openings, referring to moments that facilitate upward mobility, and ruptures, referring to interruptions in reproduction or obstacles to upward mobility. We also identify three pivotal historical moments that emerge in the collected narratives as shaping class histories and class identities in Poland: the Second World War, the 1989 political and educational transformation, and the integration into EU institutionsfrom 2004 onwards. The analysis is based on 42 biographical interviews with academics. It demonstrates the value of qualitative, biographical methods for examining class identities, which often diverge from patterns captured by purely objective criteria. This approach further allows us to reveal the role of social history and multigenerational family history in making the individuals' class histories and identities complex and ambiguous.

Social mobility and health: Evidence from the 1958 British birth cohort.