What is Social Mobility?

Social Mobility

In this course, Dr Lin Ma (University of Bristol) explores social mobility. In the first lecture, we think about what social mobility is, including from a spatial perspective. In the second lecture, we think about how education and social mobility are intertwined. Next, we think about inequalities in social mobility. In the fourth and final lecture, we think about how international mobility relates to other kinds of social mobility.

What is Social Mobility?

In this lecture, we think about what social mobility is, focusing in particular on: (i) the postmodern accessibility of physical mobility, when compared to the early modern period; (ii) recognising social mobility to be based on the premises that individuals in a society are mobile and that society is stratified; (iii) the post-industrial decline of manufacturing, which offered a lot of social mobility during the industrial revolution; (iv) the attribution of the occupation-based assessment of social mobility to Max Weber’s work; (v) the definition of open society as one where individuals on a lower strata have the ability and opportunity to move upward through society; (vi) Blau and Duncan’s The American Occupational Structure, a 1967 assessment of social stratification and mobility in the United States; (vii) research findings across other industrialised societies, which show great upward mobility into newly available job markets; (viii) Simon Kuznets’ view that inequality increases during the early stages of capitalist development, before eventually stabilising at a lower level; (ix) evidence of increasing inequalities and limits to social mobility in post-industrial societies; (x) upward intergenerational mobility, which is present far more in industrial economies than in post-industrial economies; (xi) intragenerational mobility, which is how individuals move up in social standing during their lives; (xii) the presence of downward social mobility in post-industrial economies; (xiii) Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level, their 2009 book which explained how equal societies are better for social mobility and wellbeing; (xiv) the 2008 global financial crisis, which caused many individuals to retrain for different work fields, a particularly difficult challenge for older workers; (xv) the recent pattern of reversing the historic upward mobility trend for younger people.