Is Hong Kong no Longer a Land of Opportunities after the 1997 Handover?

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 516-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Lee Wong ◽  
Anita Koo
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
Class Background ◽  
1997 Handover ◽  
Social Fluidity

A belief that Hong Kong is a land of opportunities for the talented and the hardworking makes many speculate that an increasing involvement of younger generations in politics in recent years results from their blocked social mobility. What remains unclear is whether new generations are indeed deprived of mobility opportunities in nowadays Hong Kong. We seek to address this issue empirically by analysing two datasets collected in 1989 and 2007. Situating our discussion against the context of the study of social mobility, we discuss our analysis from two perspectives of social mobility: absolute mobility (mobility due to structural changes) and relative mobility (mobility due to changes in social fluidity). Against a changing class structure over the set period, structural opportunities for upward mobility are actually available to the younger generations; but, seemingly, whether they could grasp such opportunities to get ahead has become more strongly dependent on their class background.

scholarly journals Social Mobility from a Comparative Perspective Between Europe and Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 203-234
Author(s):  
Sandra Fachelli ◽  
Ildefonso Marqués-Perales ◽  
Marcelo Boado ◽  
Patricio Solís
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
The Family ◽  
Social Fluidity ◽  
Invariance Theory ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis chapter presents a review of the analysis of social mobility in the international sphere (Europe and Latin America), with a particular focus on the partner countries of the INCASI network. To date, few studies have linked nations whose economic and social aspects are so dissimilar.As is usual in the specialized literature, the relationship between social origin and class destination is addressed. This is done by noting the comparisons made across the geographical areas. We review the analyses that have been made of the evolution of social fluidity as well as the distance between social classes within each country and the comparisons made between them.We compare the main theories that have inspired the study of social mobility to date: modernization theory, which predicts an increase in relative mobility rates, and invariance theory, which postulates the constancy of social fluidity. Special attention is devoted to the role played by the family, the state and the market in late industrialized countries.We study the difficulties for social change, i.e. upward mobility from one class to another, as well as the likelihood of reproduction in comparative terms. To do so, we link these mechanisms with the AMOSIT model. The advances in methodology, techniques, theory and data processing are highlighted.

How Mobile Is India?

Uneven Odds ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 121-170
Author(s):  
Divya Vaid
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
Opportunity Structures ◽  
The World ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Social Fluidity

Social mobility includes absoulte mobility, that is, raw numbers of people who move up, down, or remain stable; and relative mobility, that is, mobility controlling for structural change. This chapter draws out the importance of both types of mobility. Further, the intriguing pattern for women’s mobility, where women display more stability than men intergenerationally, contrary to research in most of the world, is deconstructed. While we observe an enduring trend, preceding ‘liberalization’, of the expansion of the higher salariat, and a retrenchment in agriculture leading to some amount of net upward mobility in absolute terms, we also observe low levels of social fluidity which provide an indicator of the unequal opportunity structures in Indian society.

scholarly journals Education and intergenerational social mobility in the US and four European countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Breen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Educational Expansion ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
The Us ◽  
Social Fluidity ◽  
Second World

Abstract I draw on the findings of a recently completed comparative research project to address the question: how did intergenerational social mobility change over cohorts of men and women born in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and what role, if any, did education play in this? The countries studied are the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Notwithstanding the differences between them, by and large they present the same picture. Rates of upward mobility increased among cohorts born in the second quarter of the century and then declined among those born later. Among earlier born cohorts, social fluidity increased (that is, the association between the class a person was born into and the class he or she came to occupy as an adult declined) and then remained unchanged for those born after mid-century. The association between class origins and educational attainment followed much the same trend as social fluidity. This suggests that growing equalization in education may have contributed to the increase in social fluidity. In our analyses we find that this is so, but educational expansion also led to greater fluidity in some countries. There is also a strong link between upward mobility and social fluidity. Upward mobility was mostly driven by the expansion of higher-level white-collar jobs, especially in the 30 years after the end of the Second World War. This facilitated social fluidity because people from working class and farming origins could move into the service or salariat classes without reducing the rate at which children born into those classes could remain there. Educational expansion, educational equalization, and rapid structural change in the economies of the US and Europe all contributed to greater social fluidity among people born in the second quarter of the twentieth century. For people born after mid-century, rates of downward mobility have increased: however, despite the lack of further educational equalization and less pronounced structural change, social fluidity has remained unchanged.

The Role of Education in the Social Mobility of Dutch Cohorts, 1908–74

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Richard Breen ◽  
Ruud Luijkx ◽  
Eline Berkers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Service Class ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Fluidity

The Netherlands is well known for a sustained and marked trend towards greater social fluidity during the twentieth century. This chapter investigates trends in mobility across birth cohorts of Dutch men and women born in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. During this time there was also a rapid upgrading of the Dutch class structure and marked expansion of the educational. But education played only a limited role in driving the increase in social fluidity: rather it was due mostly to the growing shares of people from nonservice-class origins who lacked a tertiary qualification but nevertheless moved into service-class destinations. An oversupply of service-class positions, relative to the share of people with a tertiary qualification, allowed less-qualified men and women from less-advantaged class backgrounds to be upwardly mobile.

Major social transformations and social mobility: the case of the transition to and from communism in Eastern Europe

1999 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henryk Domański
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Log Linear ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Social Fluidity

This analysis compares the effects on social mobility of the political transformations in Eastern Europe which took place in the 1950s and the 1990s. The author examines absolute and relative mobility rates in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Slovakia based on data from national random samples taken in 1993 and 1994. Log-linear models are applied to mobility tables for four periods, 1948-52, 1952-63, 1983-88 and 1988-93, to determine change in the strength of association between occupational categories. Searching for the effect of the transition to communism the author compares occupational mobility between 1948 and 1952 with occupational mobility between 1952 and 1963. In order to assess the effect of the transition from communism, mobility between 1983 and 1988 is compared to mobility between 1988 and 1993. It was definitely the transition to communism in the late 1940s that released the more intensive flows between basic segments of the social structure compared to what occurred during the exit from communism in the 1990s. Using both the diagonals and the constant social fluidity models, the author finds no evidence of increasing openness in post-communist countries. Contrariwise, in the 1948-63 period some significant change occurred in relative mobility chances. The conclusion is that the “first transformation” gave rise to a turn in social fluidity on the “genotypical” level.

scholarly journals Better times to come? Intergenerational class mobility of labour market entrants in Germany and the UK since the 1950s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nhat An Trinh ◽  
Erzsebet Bukodi
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Relative Mobility ◽  
Downward Mobility ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Social Fluidity

This study examines over-time trends in intergenerational class mobility based on cohorts of labour market entrants in Germany and the UK since the 1950s. We calculate absolute and relative mobility rates, separately for men and women, using the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2016), the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2016), and the UK Labour Force Survey (2014-2017). Regarding absolute mobility, we find marked country differences in upward and downward rates. In Germany, downward mobility decreased, while upward mobility rose. In the UK, downward mobility increased, while upward mobility declined. We provide evidence that these differences can be linked to contrasting changes in the distribution of origin and destination classes. Regarding relative mobility, striking country similarities appear. For both countries, we observe increases in social fluidity for respondents entering the labour market during the 1950s and 1960s that cease to continue for cohorts thereafter. Comparisons between adjacent cohorts do not provide evidence that social fluidity follows cyclical developments of the economy or shorter-term volatilities in the labour market.

scholarly journals Social mobility in Mexico. Trends, Recent Findings and Research Challenges

Revista Trace ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Patricio Solís Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Structural Mobility

La recesión de los años ochenta y la subsecuente reestructuración económica tuvieron un profundo impacto en la sociedad mexicana. No obstante, sus consecuencias sobre la movilidad social no fueron analizadas hasta finales de los noventa, cuando una serie de estudios empíricos revelaron las continuidades y los cambios en los patrones de movilidad social. En este artículo se discuten cuatro tendencias recientes: la continuidad de las altas tasas absolutas de movilidad intergeneracional; la reducción de las recompensas monetarias asociadas a la movilidad ocupacional; la creciente rigidez en las tasas relativas de movilidad; y el ajuste del caso mexicano al patrón de movilidad general propuesto por Erikson y Goldthorpe. El panorama que resulta de estas tendencias es el de una sociedad que, a pesar los efectos negativos de la crisis y los cambios estructurales de los años ochenta y noventa, ha mantenido altas tasas de movilidad social, pero sufre en otros aspectos como la calidad de las oportunidades de movilidad ascendente y la creciente desigualdad de oportunidades asociada a los orígenes de clase. El artículo concluye con una discusión sobre posibles líneas futuras de investigación de los estudios sobre movilidad social en México.Abstract: The recession of the 1980s and subsequent economic restructuring in the 1990s had a profound impact on Mexican society. However, the consequences in social mobility were not fully explored until the end of the 1990s, when a series of empirical studies revealed continuities and changes in mobility patterns. The purpose of this article is to discuss trends in intergenerational social mobility. Four findings are discussed: the continuity of high overall and upward mobility rates; the reduction of monetary gains associated to upward occupational mobility; the increasing rigidity in relative rates of occupational mobility; and the overall compliance of the Mexican case to Erikson and Golthorpe’s core model of social fluidity. The picture emerging from these findings depicts a society that, notwithstanding the negative effects of the economic recession and structural changes of the 1980s and 1990s, maintained high rates of structural mobility, but suffered in other aspects such as the decrease in the quality of opportunities of upward mobility, as well as the increasing inequality of opportunity by class origins. The article concludes with a discussion of future avenues of research for social mobility studies in Mexico.Résumé : La récession des années 1980 et la subséquente restructuration économique des années 1990 a causé un impact profond sur la société mexicaine. Néanmoins, ses conséquences sur la mobilité sociale n’ont été entièrement explorées qu’à la fin des années 1990, quand une série d’études empiriques a dévoilé des continuités et des changements dans les modèles de mobilité. Le but de cet article est d’analyser les tendances de la mobilité sociale inter générationnelle. Le débat porte sur quatre découvertes: la continuité de taux élevés d’ascension dans l’échelle sociale ; la réduction des entrées monétaires associée à une mobilité occupationnelle plus importante ; la rigidité croissante des taux relatifs à la mobilité occupationnelle ; et la totale conformité du cas mexicain au modèle type de fluidité sociale d’Erickson et Golthorpe. L’image qui émerge de ces résultats décrit une société qui, malgré les effets négatifs de la récession économique et les réformes structurelles des années 1980 et 1990, maintient de hauts indices de mobilité structurelle, mais qui paie les conséquences d’autres aspects tels que la baisse de la qualité des opportunités d’ascension dans l’échelle sociale, ainsi que l’augmentation de l’inégalité d’opportunités données par la classe d’origine. L’article conclut par une discus- sion sur les futures voies de recherche possibles pour affiner les études sur la mobilité sociale au Mexique.

Cognitive Structure of Social Mobility: Moral Sentiments and Hidden Injuries of Class

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Lee Wong
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
New Class ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social Fluidity

Drawing on the mobility accounts of eighty-nine respondents who perceived themselves as socially mobile in post-war Hong Kong, I devise a typology of four biographies – normal, choice, special, and emotional biographies – to examine the cognitive structure of their accounts in order to make sense of moral sentiments of class. Three tentative conclusions are drawn. First, class feelings could be seen as better class markers than self-reported class identity. Second, upward mobility does not simply complicate class feelings but could lead to a distorted class sentiment that justifies rather than challenges class inequality; yet four biographies show a variety of its operation. Third, upward mobility does not necessarily treat previous class injuries; instead, it could bring new class injuries. In sum, social fluidity of a class society does not make class inequality less arbitrary or more just nor does it necessarily render class feelings and moral sentiments of class as irrelevant.

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 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.

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