scholarly journals Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Betthäuser
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Level ◽  
Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between indi- viduals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

scholarly journals Left behind? Over-time change in the social mobility of children from unskilled working-class backgrounds in Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian A Betthäuser
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Level ◽  
Social Fluidity

Research on intergenerational social mobility tends to focus on examining the level of overall social fluidity in society. However, from a social justice perspective it can be argued that the type of social fluidity that matters most is upward mobility from the lowest rung of the social ladder. This article examines the labour market chances of children from parents in unskilled working-class positions, relative to children from skilled working-class and higher social class backgrounds, and how they have changed across four birth cohorts in post-WWII Germany. We find that individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds have substantially lower labour market chances than individuals from skilled working-class backgrounds or higher social class backgrounds. Moreover, we find that the gap in labour market chances between individuals from unskilled working-class backgrounds and individuals from more advantaged backgrounds has not narrowed but, if anything, has widened across the four birth cohorts we examine. Our results suggest that an important factor underlying this sustained labour market inequality is a persistently high level of educational inequality between these groups.

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.

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.

Social Class and Code Elaboration in Oral Communication

1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Millicent E. Poole ◽  
T. W. Field
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Class Groups ◽  
Parental Occupation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Coding

The Bernstein thesis of elaborated and restricted coding orientation in oral communication was explored at an Australian tertiary institute. A working-class/middle-class dichotomy was established on the basis of parental occupation and education, and differences in overall coding orientation were found to be associated with social class. This study differed from others in the area in that the social class groups were contrasted in the totality of their coding orientation on the elaborated/restricted continuum, rather than on discrete indices of linguistic coding.

scholarly journals Social origin and educational attainment in China: a historical analysis of 70 birth cohorts

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Changchun Fang ◽  
Xiaotian Feng
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The impact of social origin on educational attainment is conditioned on the social context in which people live. In recent decades, with changes in the Chinese society, how has the impact of social origin on educational inequality changed? Based on an analysis of 70 birth cohorts, this study details the effect of social origin on educational inequality and its trends over the past 70 years. The results of this study also indicate that the historical stages hypothesis (HSH) and model-shift hypothesis (MSH) emphasized in previous studies cannot fully describe the historical changes in educational inequality. In addition to macrosocial processes, there may exist other structural factors that also affect educational inequality but are neglected. The social context and its transformation, which shaped the relationship between social origin and educational inequality, need to be examined in more detail.

Social mobility will fall for China’s disadvantaged

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Credit System ◽  
Absolute Poverty ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Credit ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Level

Subject Social mobility in China. Significance So far, the Communist Party leadership has only addressed the most extreme manifestations of inequality -- high-level corruption and rural poverty. It has not tackled a wide range of social, economic and institutional barriers to social mobility that affect hundreds of millions of people across the country. Impacts Members of China’s middle class are already approaching the limits of their upward mobility. The social credit system could evolve in a way that exacerbates the divide between the economically advantaged and disadvantaged. The campaign to eliminate absolute poverty will do little to address the problem of relative poverty in urban areas.

scholarly journals What CLASS are you in? A study of social class, school choice and identity

2011 ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Kevin Cahill
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Significant Proportion ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Equal Educational Opportunities

My PhD investigates schools and communities as places constructed by ideas of social class, school choice, identity and comparisons between people as worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving. This thesis contributes to the social justice genre of social science research where equal educational opportunities are seen as an essential ingredient in a just society. I explore the tension between what may be termed here, for the purposes of clarity, the middle-class and the working-class in the context of an Irish urban second level school with DEIS status. DEIS stands for Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools and it is the designation given to schools where a significant proportion of students are from working-class backgrounds. One adult participant in this study informed me that “social class didn’t exist in Ireland, that it was an English thing”. You may make your own mind up but not before you ask some important questions:

‘Social Change, Friendship and Civic Participation’

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaojun Li ◽  
Mike Savage ◽  
Andrew Pickles
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
British Household Panel Survey ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Social

This paper studies the changing distribution of social capital and its impact on class formation in England and Wales from a ‘class structural’ perspective. It compares data from the Social Mobility Inquiry (1972) and the British Household Panel Survey (1992 and 1998) to show a distinct change in the class profiling of membership in civic organisations, with traditionally working-class dominated associations losing their working-class character, and middle-class dominated associations becoming even more middle-class dominated. Similar changes are evident for class-differentiated patterns of friendship. Our study indicates the class polarization of social capital in England and Wales.

Negotiating Mobility: Royal Dockyard Workers as Railway Excursion Agents and Social Entrepreneurs, 1880–1918

2021 ◽  
pp. 002252662110434
Author(s):  
Melanie Bassett
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Social Entrepreneur ◽  
Social Entrepreneurs ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
Working People

From their creation in the mid-nineteenth century in Britain railway excursions provided working people with the means to expand their horizons and create new opportunities for identity- and money-making. This article explores the role of the social entrepreneur and their affect on social mobility. It also re-evaluates working-class leisure in the south of England and challenges the notion that the working-classes were not proactive in establishing their own unique commercial leisure cultures. Using a case study of two dockyard excursion enterprises, which were operated as sideline ventures by skilled artisans of the Royal Dockyard in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK, the article will demonstrate how local working-class access to travel and cultural experiences were broadened and transformed through their initiatives and analyse the role and influence of these men on their co-workers and in wider society.

Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital

2008 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Ream ◽  
Gregory J. Palardy
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Educational Inequality ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Status

Emergent ethnographic research disentangles “social capital” from other components of social class (e.g., material and human capital) to show how class-stratified parental social networks exacerbate educational inequality among schoolchildren. The authors build upon this research by using survey data to reexamine whether certain forms of parental social capital create educational advantages for socioeconomically privileged students vis-à-vis their less economically fortunate peers. By drawing a distinction between the availability of social capital and its convertibility, the authors find that whereas larger stocks of parental social capital accompany higher rungs on the social class ladder, its educational utility is less clearly associated with class status. A possible exception to this pattern pertains to the educational utility of middle-class parents’ ideas about the collective efficacy of influencing school policies and practices. At issue is whether a more inclusive understanding of the material and sociological reasons for educational inequality can spur educationally useful social exchange among parents across social class boundaries.

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