Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class. Katherine S. Newman

1988 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-228
Author(s):  
Louise Lamphere
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Downward Mobility

Upward mobility in a forgotten tribe

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (65) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Megan Moodie
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Hiring Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Community Members ◽  
The Real ◽  
Affluent Community ◽  
Layer Problem

Public discussions of recent demands by the Gujjars of Rajasthan, India, for inclusion on the list of the state's affirmative action beneficiaries have often veered away from the legitimacy of their claims and toward whether elite Gujjar leaders can speak for less educated and less affluent community members. This article examines how this latter set of questions-often described as the “creamy layer“ problem in reference to a group's elite who have “risen to the top“ and need to be “skimmed off“-can obscure the real workings of affirmative action on the ground and the limitations encountered by groups seeking upward mobility. Ethnographic research with the Dhanka tribe reveals deep concerns that upwardly mobile groups are in danger of downward mobility without the protection of affirmative action-based hiring practices, and that middle class elites within the tribe can be important political advocates for others within the community.

scholarly journals Class, Culture, and Downward Mobility

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessi Streib
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
National Study ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Class Reproduction

The study of class and culture is predominately the study of class reproduction, not also downward mobility. This article maintains that sociologists do not see the cultural mechanisms associated with downward mobility because we share three collective blinders. First, we under-emphasize the ways that middle-class cultural practices are mismatched with the practices that institutions reward. Second, we over-emphasize the utility of middle-class cultural practices for their class reproduction. We do this as we focus on youths’ cultural practices within institutions, ignoring that not all youth enter institutions associated with class reproduction. Third, we assume that the dominant cultural practices of each class keeps youth in their original social class. In doing so, we do not consider that middle-class actors avoid downward mobility by adopting the dominant practices of the working-class. Using interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, this article shows how removing these blinders can help us understand how culture relates to downward mobility. It does so by revisiting Lareau’s theory of how entitlement and constraint relate to class reproduction.

Privilege Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessi Streib
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
White Youth ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Class Reproduction ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
Class Youth

One in two white youth born into the upper-middle class will fall from it. Drawing upon 10 years of longitudinal interviews with over 100 American youth, this book shows which upper-middle-class youth are most likely to fall, how they fall, and why they do not see it coming. The book shows that upper-middle-class youth inherit different amounts of academic knowledge, institutional insights, and money from their parents. Those raised with more of these resources enter class reproduction pathways, while those raised with fewer of these resources enter downwardly mobile paths. Of course, upper-middle-class youth whose families give them few resources could switch courses by acquiring these resources from their community. They rarely do. Instead, they internalize identities that reflect their resource weaknesses and encourage them to maintain them. Those who fall are then youth raised with resource weaknesses, and they fall by internalizing identities that discourage them from gaining more resources. They are often surprised by their downward mobility as they observed other time periods in which their resources and identities kept them or their parents in their social class.

The Downwardly Mobile

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jessi Streib
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Class Reproduction ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Upper Middle Class

Downward mobility is common, but we know little about who falls from the upper-middle class, how, and why they don’t see it coming. This chapter provides an overview of how intergenerational downward mobility occurs. It shows that both resources and identities are associated with downward mobility from the upper-middle class. Individuals who inherit relatively high levels of academic knowledge, institutional insights, and money tend to develop an identity that leads them to maintain high levels of these resources. They use these resources to reproduce their class position. Individuals who inherit relatively low levels of academic knowledge, institutional insights, or money tend to develop an identity that encourages them to maintain their resource weaknesses. Without the resources that schools, colleges, and professional workplaces reward, they tend to enter downwardly mobile trajectories. They do not necessarily anticipate their impending downward mobility as they observe times when they or their parents moved toward class reproduction while not having high levels of these resources.

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