Horizontal Social Mobility

Vertical Social Mobility, Social Mobility, Books Social Mobility, Stratification

Social mobility is the transition of an individual or social object or value - anything that has been created or modified by human activity - from one social position to another. Based on the direction of the transition, we can classify vertical social mobility as: ascending and descending, or social climbing and social sinking.

When the transition of an individual or social object is from one social stratum to another, we call it vertical social mobility.

In social mobility we have movement of individuals or groups from one position to another. It might be horizontal or vertical.

Horizontal social mobility is the transition of an individual from one position to another situated on the same level, that is, moving from one company to another in the same occupational status (movement of blue-collar worker in company A to blue-collar worker in company B)

Horizontal social mobility concerns, according to Sorokin (Sorokin 1959), ‘transition of an individual or social object from one social group to another situated on the same level’, while vertical social mobility, ‘refers to transitions of people from one social stratum to one higher or lower in the social scale’ (Sorokin, 1959).

Vertical social mobility is the transition of an individual from one position to another, situated at a different level. It can be a move up (upwardly mobile) or a move down (downwardly mobile).

We usually speak of moves up or down taking into account factors such as occupation or education. For instance, upward occupational mobility means moving from a lower status occupation to a higher status occupation. Downward occupational mobility means moving from a high status occupation to another, situated at a lower level.

Depending on the nature of the stratification, there are ascending and descending currents of economic, political, and occupational mobility.

Social mobility can be horizontal or vertical.

Examples of horizontal social mobility are:

• Transition of an individual or social object from one social group to another situated on the same level.

• Transitions of individuals without any noticeable change of the social position of an individual or social object in the vertical direction.

• Transition from one citizenship to another,

• Transition from one family to another by divorce and remarriage,

• Transition from one factory to another in the same occupational status.

• Transitions of social objects, the radio, automobile, fashion, Communism, Darwin's theory, within the same social stratum, from one place to another.

The ascending currents can be explained:

• as an infiltration of the individuals of a lower stratum into an existing higher one; and

• as a creation of a new group by such individuals, and the insertion of such a group into a higher stratum instead of, or side by side with, the existing groups of this stratum.

The descending current can be explained:

• Moving down or falling of individuals from a higher social position into an existing lower one, without a degradation or disintegration of the higher group to which they belonged;

• The degradation of a social group as a whole and demotion of its rank among other groups, or the complete disintegration of a social group as a social unit.

Democracy and Vertical Social Mobility
One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the so-called "democratic societies" is a more intensive vertical social mobility compared with that of the non-democratic groups. In democratic societies the social position of an individual, at least theoretically, is not determined by his birth; all positions are open to everybody who can get them; there are no judicial or religious obstacles to climbing or going down. All this facilitates a "greater vertical social mobility" (capillarity, according to the expression of Dumont) in such societies. This greater mobility is probably one of the causes of the belief that the social building of democratic societies is not stratified, or is less stratified, than that of autocratic societies.We have seen that this opinion is not warranted by the facts. Such a belief is a kind of mental aberration, due to many causes, and among them to the fact that the strata in democratic groups are more open, have more holes and "elevators" to go up and down. This produces the illusion that there are no strata, even though they exist.

There has never existed a society in which vertical social mobility has been absolutely free and the trasition from one social stratum to another has had no resistance. Every organized society is a stratified body. If veritcal mobility were absolutely free, in the resultant society there would be no strata. It would remind us of a building having no floors separating one story from another. But all societies have been stratified. This means that within them there has been a kind of "sieve" which has sifted the individuals, allowing some to go up, keeping others in the lower strata, and contrariwise.

Only in periods of anarchy and great disorder, when the entire social structure is broken and where the social strata are considerably demolished, do we have anything reminding us of a chaotic and disorganized vertical mobility en masse.

Vertical social mobility, varies from society to society. Compare the Indian caste-society with the American society to see that. If the highest ranks in the political, or economic, or occupational cone of both societies are taken, it is seen that in India almost all these ranks are determined by birth, and there are very few "upstarts" who climbed to these positions from the lowest strata. Meanwhile, in the United States, among its captains of industry and finance, 38.8 per cent in the past and 19.6 per cent in the present generation started poor; 31.5 percent among the deceased and 27.7 per cent among the living multimillionaires started their careers neither rich nor poor; among the twenty-nine presidents of the United States 14, or 48.3 percent, came from poor and humble families.

The differences in the generality of the vertical mobility of both countries are similar. In India a great majority of the occupational population inherit and keep throughout their lives the occupational status of their fathers; in the United States the majority of the population change their occupations at least once in a lifetime.