scholarly journals Educational Upward Mobility. Practices of Social Changes--Research on Social Mobility and Educational Inequality

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Mei-ling Lin
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Income Poverty ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
Symbolic Domination

Social class is defined by the possession of all forms of economic capital, cultural capital and social capital which together shape the kinds of experience and lifestyles. This process is dubbed symbolic violence by Pierre Bourdieu. Education is crucially linked to assets such as income, occupational position and social prestige. Educational upward mobility requires more than individual effort and intelligence, and sometimes different ingredients, such as specific social conditions. The different dimensions of inequality—income, poverty, social exclusion, education and social mobility—are interconnected. The paper has been inspired by Bourdieu’s work on symbolic domination and capitals, and lifestyles. The author identifies a persistence of inequalities among the students due to social reproduction mechanisms: family background and parents’ social situation have a substantial influence on the life chances. The empirical data of this study come from a survey in 2019. The paper ends with a summary of findings and conclusions.

scholarly journals Getting the Teacher’s Attention: Parent-Teacher Contact and Teachers’ Behavior in the Classroom

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (2) ◽  
pp. 560-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie A E Young
Keyword(s):  
Academic Success ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Parental Involvement ◽  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Student Performance ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Student Behavior ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Family Background ◽  
School Students

Abstract Studies suggest that both parental involvement and support from teachers matter for students’ academic success. Although cross-national research has revealed numerous ways in which parents shape the schooling process, less clear is whether parental involvement at school can influence teachers’ daily behavior toward students in class. In this study, I draw on data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS)—a nationally representative survey of Chinese middle-school students with unusually detailed information on parental involvement and teachers’ daily behaviors—to test a conceptual model that proposes a link between parent-teacher contact in China and attention students receive from teachers during daily lessons. In support of the conceptual model, I find that students whose parents cultivate relationships with teachers through frequent contact are more likely to be cold-called on and praised by teachers in class, even after controlling for family background, student academic performance, and student behavior. Moreover, I observe social class differences in parent-teacher contact, as well as some evidence that parent-teacher contact is linked to improved student performance through its impact on teachers’ attention. Overall, the findings point to a potential new pathway through which social class influences schooling by way of school-based parental involvement and in a broader set of contexts than previously imagined. I conclude with a discussion of implications for social reproduction theory, as well as challenges this situation presents for combatting educational inequality.

scholarly journals The ‘dual tension’ created by negotiating upward social mobility and habitus: A generational study of skilled working-class men, their sons and grandsons following deindustrialization

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (7) ◽  
pp. 891-911
Author(s):  
George Karl Ackers
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Intergenerational Study ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Generational Study ◽  
Upward Social Mobility

This article presents an intergenerational study of 28 skilled working-class men’s life stories of negotiating social mobility in the wake of deindustrialization. This contributes to emerging qualitative research that aims to build a framework that understands the personal tensions social mobility creates for individuals. In this study, the tensions that men experienced were not exclusively the consequence of ‘habitus clivé’, i.e. men feeling a dislocation from their working-class backgrounds as they climbed the occupational ladder. Men’s tensions also arose from internalizing the generational pressure to improve their occupational position. Pressed by these competing tensions, men developed a ‘ getting-on outlook’ over their careers, which meant that each generation pursued upward social mobility while also seeking to have the integrity of their working lives authenticated by their parents. To build on habitus, Bertaux and Bertaux-Wiame’s description of the ‘dual tension’ is advanced as a means to frame the conflict between belonging and individuality that social mobility provoked. This article suggests this ‘dual tension’ could be reduced by families in a process named ‘authentication’. ‘Authentication’ reflects intergenerational dialogues and practices developed by the younger generations to have their achieved status recognized as in keeping with their family background.

Class and Continuity in Social Reproduction: An Empirical Investigation

1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Prandy
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Relative Advantage ◽  
Continuous Measure ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
The Social ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Fathers And Sons ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Mobility Study

The class tradition in the study of social mobility suffers from a number of theoretical and practical weaknesses. In this article we concentrate on the issue of how well the Goldthorpe/CASMIN class schema explains the extent of the social reproduction of advantage when compared with the Cambridge Scale, a continuous measure of occupational and social hierarchy. If classes are to be given any useful meaning, then the groupings involved should be internally relatively homogeneous with respect to a significant criterion of interest to the researcher and there should be relatively clear boundaries between them. In the case of social mobility, the criterion of interest is the ability of the members of one generation to pass on any relative advantage to their successors. Using data from the Nuffield Social Mobility Study, the article examines the relationship between the occupational position of fathers and sons, demonstrating that there is substantial variation within social classes with respect to the reproduction of advantage and that there is no evidence for the existence of boundaries between classes. One consequence is an under-estimation of the extent of reproduction. The findings indicate that the stratification order has to be seen as a continuous hierarchy rather than as a set of distinct classes.

Moving Up without Losing Your Way

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Morton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
College Experience ◽  
Career Opportunities ◽  
Community Finding

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this book looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. The book reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, the book seeks to reverse this course. It urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. The book paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves.

scholarly journals Re-Imagining Social Mobility: The Role of Relationality, Social Class and Place in Qualitative Constructions of Mobility

2021 ◽  
pp. 136078042098512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Folkes
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Key Techniques ◽  
Class Community

Discussions around social mobility have increasingly gained traction in both political and academic circles in the last two decades. The current, established conceptualisation of social mobility reduces ‘success’ down to individual level of educational achievement, occupational position and income, focusing on the successful few who rise up and move out. For many in working-class communities, this discourse is undesirable or antithetical to everyday life. Drawing upon 13 interviews with 9 families collected as part of an ethnographic study, this article asks, ‘how were social (im)mobility narratives and notions of value constructed by residents of one working-class community?’ Its findings highlight how alternative narratives of social (im)mobility were constructed; emphasising the value of fixity, anchorage, and relationality. Three key techniques were used by participants when constructing social (im)mobility narratives: the born and bred narrative; distancing from education as a route to mobility; and the construction of a distinct working-class discourse of fulfilment. Participants highlighted the value of anchorage to place and kinship, where fulfilment results from finding ontological security. The findings demonstrate that residents of a working-class community constructed alternative social mobility narratives using a relational selfhood model that held local value. This article makes important contributions to the theorisation of social mobility in which it might be understood as a collective rather than individual endeavour, improving entire communities that seek ontological security instead of social class movement and dislocation.

scholarly journals By Slow Degrees: Two Centuries of Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lambert ◽  
Kenneth Prandy ◽  
Wendy Bottero
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Quality Of Data ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Parental Background ◽  
Long Term Trends

This paper discusses long term trends in patterns of intergenerational social mobility in Britain. We argue that there is convincing empirical evidence of a small but steady linear trend towards increasing social mobility throughout the period 1800-2004. Our conclusions are based upon the construction and analysis of an extended micro-social dataset, which combines records from an historical genealogical study, with responses from 31 sample surveys conducted over the period 1963-2004. There has been much previous study of trends in social mobility, and little consensus on their nature. We argue that this dissension partly results from the very slow pace of change in mobility rates, which makes the time-frame of any comparison crucial, and raises important methodological questions about how long-term change in mobility is best measured. We highlight three methodological difficulties which arise when trying to draw conclusions over mobility trends - concerning the extent of controls for life course effects; the quality of data resources; and the measurement of stratification positions. After constructing a longitudinal dataset which attempts to confront these difficulties, our analyses provide robust evidence which challenges hitherto more popular, politicised claims of declining or unchanging mobility. By contrast, our findings suggest that Britain has moved, and continues to move, steadily towards increasing equality in the relationship between occupational attainment and parental background.

scholarly journals Guilds, Social Mobility and Status in Sixteenth-Century Ghent

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Dambruyne
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Social Promotion ◽  
Social Position ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Democratic Character ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This article investigates the relationship between social mobility and status in guilds and the political situation in sixteenth-century Ghent. First, it argues that Ghent guilds showed neither a static picture of upward mobility nor a rectilinear and one-way evolution. It demonstrates that the opportunities for social promotion within the guild system were, to a great extent, determined by the successive political regimes of the city. Second, the article proves that the guild boards in the sixteenth century had neither a typically oligarchic nor a typically democratic character. Third, the investigation of the houses in which master craftsmen lived shows that guild masters should not be depicted as a monolithic social bloc, but that significant differences in status and wealth existed. The article concludes that there was no linear positive connection between the duration of a master craftsman's career and his wealth and social position.

Ethnic identity, biological history and dental morphology: evaluating the indigenous status of Maharashtra's Mahars

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (285) ◽  
pp. 671-681 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Hemphill ◽  
John R. Lukacs ◽  
Subhash R. Walimbe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Phenotypic Diversity ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Dental Morphology ◽  
Indigenous Status ◽  
Intimate Contact ◽  
Occupational Position ◽  
Biological History ◽  
Caste Groups

The idea of indigenous people in South Asia is more complex than elsewhere, in part because it involves longstanding and intimate contact between ‘tribal’ and non-tribal peoples (Béteille 1998; Gardner 1985; Lukacs in press). Additional complications arise from the hierarchal and endogamous structure of Hindu social and ritual organization, including the plight of people who occupy the lowest stratum of the hierarchy — ‘untouchables’ (Charsley 1996; Delikge 1992; 1993). Because the system of socioreligious stratification known as caste does not encourage social mobility, new ethnic identity is often sought by groups whose position in the hierarchy is low (Dumont 1980; Klass 1980; Kolinda 1978). Biological anthropologists are interested in the caste system for the opportunities it offers to understand the interaction of cultural behaviour with the biological patterning of human genetic and phenotypic diversity (Majumder 1998; Majumder et al. 1990; Malhotra 1974). Although most Westerners perceive caste as an immutable category, in which membership is ascribed, and hierarchal rank is forever fixed, many accounts of castes changing their occupational and ritual status have been documented (Silverberg 1968). Some castes seek to elevate their ritual or economic position by claiming higher status and adopting an appropriate new caste name, while others lay claim to indigenous origins seeking to benefit from rights and privileges that accompany autochthonous status. Such claims often involve adopting new or different patterns of behaviour commonly associated with the new social, religious, indigenous or occupational position claimed. This process is sufficiently common in India to be labelled ‘Sanskritization’ when a Hindu caste emulates higher castes (Srinivas 1968), ‘Hinduization’ when tribal or non-caste groups emulate Hindu castes, or more generally, ‘elite-emulation’ (Lynch 1969).

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