Downward Mobility and the Individualization of Youth Struggle: Girls as Public Pedagogy

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-201
Author(s):  
Miranda Campbell
Author(s):  
Richard E. Ocejo

In today's new economy—in which “good” jobs are typically knowledge or technology based—many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual-labor occupations as careers. This book looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering. The book takes readers into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into “cool” and highly specialized upscale occupational niches—and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. It shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of “cultural repertoires,” which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. The book describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers. The book provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.


Author(s):  
Jordanna Bailkin

This chapter asks how refugee camps transformed people as well as spaces, altering the identities of the individuals and communities who lived in and near them. It considers how camps forged and fractured economic, religious, and ethnic identities, constructing different kinds of unity and disunity. Camps had unpredictable effects on how refugees and Britons thought of themselves, and how they saw their relationship to upward and downward mobility. As the impoverished Briton emerged more clearly in the imagination of the welfare state, the refugee was his constant companion and critic. The state struggled to determine whether refugees required the same care as the poor, or if they warranted their own structures of aid.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147490412110056
Author(s):  
Lovisa Bergdahl ◽  
Elisabet Langmann

The paper offers a pedagogical response to the complexity of sustainability challenges that takes the existential and emotional dimensions of climate change seriously. To this end, the paper unfolds in two parts. The first part makes a distinction between ‘public pedagogy’ as an area of educational scholarship and ‘pedagogical publics’ as a theoretical lens for identifying certain qualities within educational environments, exploring what potential this distinction has for rethinking public pedagogy for sustainable development. Turning to Bonnie Honig (2015) and her call for creating ‘holding environments’ in the public sphere as a response to the democratic need of our time, the second part translates her political notion into an educational notion asking what fostering pedagogical publics as holding environments might involve. In relation to sustainability challenges, it is suggested that an environment that ‘holds’ people together as a pedagogical public has three main qualities: a) it makes room for new rituals for sustainable living to be developed in order to offer a sense of permanence; b) it invites narratives that can frame sustainability challenges in more positive registers; and c) it reinstates an intergenerational difference that serves to give back hopes and dreams to adults and children in troubling times.


Author(s):  
Carlos Santiago-Caballero

ABSTRACT This paper sheds light on a crucial period of Spanish economic history, analysing changes in intergenerational occupational mobility. We use newly collected empirical evidence from Valencia, a region that followed a path of growth based on agrarian capitalism focused on international markets. We show that occupational mobility improved between 1841 and 1850, but that this situation reversed during the following decades. The opportunities offered to individuals from poorer families quickly disappeared. Put in international perspective, occupational mobility in Valencia was far lower than in other European countries, where both downward and especially upward mobility were considerably higher. By 1870, Valencia had become a polarised society, where the lowest part of the income distribution suffered increasing pauperisation and downward mobility.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104346312199408
Author(s):  
Carlo Barone ◽  
Katherin Barg ◽  
Mathieu Ichou

This work examines the validity of the two main assumptions of relative risk-aversion models of educational inequality. We compare the Breen-Goldthorpe (BG) and the Breen-Yaish (BY) models in terms of their assumptions about status maintenance motives and beliefs about the occupational risks associated with educational decisions. Concerning the first assumption, our contribution is threefold. First, we criticise the assumption of the BG model that families aim only at avoiding downward mobility and are insensitive to the prospects of upward mobility. We argue that the loss-aversion assumption proposed by BY is a more realistic formulation of status-maintenance motives. Second, we propose and implement a novel empirical approach to assess the validity of the loss-aversion assumption. Third, we present empirical results based on a sample of families of lower secondary school leavers indicating that families are sensitive to the prospects of both upward and downward mobility, and that the loss-aversion hypothesis of BY is empirically supported. As regards the risky choice assumption, we argue that families may not believe that more ambitious educational options entail occupational risks relative to less ambitious ones. We present empirical evidence indicating that, in France, the academic path is not perceived as a risky option. We conclude that, if the restrictive assumptions of the BG model are removed, relative-risk aversion needs not drive educational inequalities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003804072098289
Author(s):  
Corey Moss-Pech ◽  
Steven H. Lopez ◽  
Laurie Michaels

Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults’ educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the post–Great Recession labor market in the United States, this article advances the concept of educational downgrading: returning to school in pursuit of a credential lower than the highest level of education one previously sought or attained. We explore three pathways to downgrading connected to downward mobility: occupational dead ends, career reversals, and educational inflation. In the process, we highlight how individuals adjust their practical educational aspirations as they navigate a contemporary economy in which careers are unstable and credentials are needed for many kinds of jobs across the occupational hierarchy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
D Costa ◽  
L Biddle ◽  
C Mühling ◽  
K Bozorgmehr

Abstract Background Changes in the subjective social status (SSS) of migrants, specifically between the pre- and post-migratory movement, can be a relevant determinant of their mental health condition. This study analyzed the effect of downward subjective social mobility to the mental health of asylum seekers and refugees (ASR) in Germany. Methods Through a random sampling procedure, 560 adult ASR (18+ years) were recruited across 58 collective accommodation centers in Germanys' 3rd largest state (2018). SSS was assessed with the MacArthur social ladder (10-rungs), in reference to the participants' position in the country of origin and in Germany. Quality of Life (QoL, measured with EUROHIS-QOL), anxiety (General Anxiety Disorder-2) and depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-2), were considered as mental health outcomes. Generalized linear regression models were fitted to measure associations between changes in SSS and each outcome. Results A loss of 3 or more steps in SSS from origin to Germany (compared to no-change) was significantly associated with poorer scores in QoL (B, standardized coefficient= -2.679, standard error, se = 1.351, p = 0.047), with more symptoms of depression (B = 1.156, se = 0.389, p = 0.003) and anxiety (B = 0.971, se = 0.432, p = 0.025), in models adjusted for SSS in the country of origin. The strength and direction of associations was unaltered after further adjusting for sex, age, educational level and time since arrival, although the coefficient for QoL was non-significant for those declaring a 3-step downward mobility (B= -2.494, se = 1.351, p = 0.066 for QoL; B = 1.048, se = 0.393, p = 0.008 for depression; and B = 1.006, se = 0.438, p = 0.022 for anxiety). Discussion The results suggest that interventions should focus on those experiencing social downward mobility and not only prioritize individuals with low social status. Early integration efforts and intersectoral measures to counter social downward mobility could prevent poor mental health among ASR. Key messages We analysed the impact to the quality of life and mental health of asylum seekers and refugees, of a change in subjective social status from country of origin to Germany. Asylum seekers and refugees residing in Germany, who perceived a downward social status mobility following their migration process, are at risk for poorer mental health.


2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos J. Gil-Hernández

This article bridges the literature on educational inequality between and within families to test whether high–socioeconomic status (SES) families compensate for low cognitive ability in the transition to secondary education in Germany. The German educational system of early-ability tracking (at age 10) represents a stringent setting for the compensatory hypothesis. Overall, previous literature offers inconclusive findings. Previous research between families suffers from the misspecification of parental SES and ability, while most within-family research did not stratify the analysis by SES or the ability distribution. To address these issues, I draw from the TwinLife study to implement a twin fixed-effects design that minimizes unobserved confounding. I report two main findings. First, highly educated families do not compensate for twins’ differences in cognitive ability at the bottom of the ability distribution. In the German system of early-ability tracking, advantaged families may have more difficulties to compensate than in countries where educational transitions are less dependent on ability. Second, holding parents’ and children’s cognitive ability constant, pupils from highly educated families are 27% more likely to attend the academic track. This result implies wastage of academic potential for disadvantaged families, challenging the role of cognitive ability as the leading criterion of merit for liberal theories of equal opportunity. These findings point to the importance of other factors that vary between families with different resources and explain educational success, such as noncognitive abilities, risk aversion to downward mobility, and teachers’ bias.


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