Social Mobility. The movement of an individual or group from one class or social status to another. Usually, the point of reference is an individual's class or status of social origin and social mobility occurs when later class or status positions differ from those of origin.

The movement of an individual or group from one class or social status to another. The upward or downward movement within a stratification system.

Social mobility is typically measured by comparing the status positions of adult children to that of their parents (intergenerational mobility), but it can be measured by comparing a person's status position over their own lifetime (intragenerational mobility). Sociologists see social mobility as a useful way to measure equality of opportunity.

Capitalist societies are open-class and therefore one can expect a high degree of social mobility. According to liberal theory this movement within a stratification system should result from a person's achievements and should not be based on ascribed characteristics such as sex, race, region of birth, and parent's class position.

Usually, the point of reference is an individual's class or status of social origin and social mobility occurs when later class or status positions differ from those of origin. Social mobility would be high where individuals have equal opportunity to achieve new statuses and low where there are inequalities of opportunity and processes of status ascription.

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.

Social mobility can be horizontal or vertical.

Examples of horizontal social mobility or shifting 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.

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

Based on the direction of the transition, we can classify vertical social mobility as: ascending and descending, or social climbing and social sinking.

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

The ascending currents can be explained as:

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 as:

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.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN TYPES? WHAT ARE THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MOBILITY? WHAT ARE THE RATES AND PATTERNS OF MOBILITY? - www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/class/socmob.htm

ISA Research Committee 28 on Social Stratification and Social Mobility - Summaries of paper presented at RC28 conferences 1991-1998 - www.fss.uu.nl/soc/HG/rc28/

SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility) project has collected personal histories, concerned with social status and inequality, with national representative samples in Japan. At 1955 the first survey was conducted by the Japanese Association of Sociology. www.nik.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/~tsigeto/ssm/e.html

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Polodny, Joel M. 1993. "A Status-Based Model of Market Competition." American Journal of Sociology 98(4): 829-872.

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Smith, D. Randall and Andrew Abbott. 1983. "A Labor Market Perspective on the Mobility of College Football Coaches." Social Forces 61(4): 1147-1167.

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Research on social and economic mobility has been one of several main pillars within U.S. sociology for over three decades. Within the past 20 years we have seen growing recognition that a more "structural" understanding and improved methodological approaches are essential. Ronald Breiger's collection of papers presented in Social Mobility and Social Structure represents an important contribution to the efforts to improve this understanding.

In his introduction, Breiger traces the history of stratification research, from the early work of Blau and Duncan -- the "Status Attainment" origins -- through the rise of "the new structuralism," which constitutes the foundation of the papers presented in this volume by an impressive array of authors. In Part 1, John Padgett examines the intricacies of the congressional committee assignments. Peter Marsden and Karen Campbell provide a discussion of the impact of social networks on employment. Andrew Abbott ties in historical data to provide an understanding of the structural constraints and the "vacancy" metaphor as a means of understanding these research problems. Christopher Jencks offers a provocative examination of the theoretical and empirical problems encountered when examining social mobility and equal opportunity.

In part 2, Breiger takes us "beyond occupations," presenting us with research on a variety of areas including organizational careers (Gaertner), labor market practices (Brittain and Wholey), and issues of social class and mobility (Breiger). Most interesting in this section is Jerry Jacobs's discussion of sex segregation, and the extent to which occupational sex types inhibit mobility.

The impressive array of essays and authors not withstanding, there are some problems with Breiger's production. While the authors present us with important contributions -- predominately in the form of methodological applications to areas of concentration seen frequently in these authors' repertoires -- the dated nature of these projects is somewhat disappointing. Several of the articles are mirror modifications of previously presented materials, a point acknowledged by Breiger in his introduction -- most notably, Karen Gaertner's essay was originally published 10 years prior to this book. While Gaertner's chapter is important to the focus of the book, an update as to more recent contributions or attempts at replicating her methodology would have been useful.

Similarly, a number of the articles in parts 1 and 2 could have benefited from a review of more recent efforts at improving the examination of mobility and social structure. Chapters 2 through 9 show only a handful of references to works after 1984, save for references to the recent work of the chapters' authors. In addition, some attention to the timeliness of the data could have been included. For example, John Padgett's discussion of the committee seat selection processes in Congress during the 1960s would have benefited greatly from some discussion of how this process might be affected by structural changes. Specifically, how might the change from the powerful position of the Democrats during the 1960s to the period of Republican Presidencies through the 1980s play out in this selection process. Granted, data may not be available to test these changes (although I believe such may indeed be at hand), but some theoretical discussion along these lines would have been helpful for graduate students and newcomers to the study of social mobility.

The most promising chapters in the text are those in part 3. Lin, Rosenbaum, and Althauser and Kalleberg not only bring the individual back in, but bring the reader back in as well. Nan Lin offers a solid application of how, where, and why social mobility research can be of value within the discipline. Although one may not enjoy his agenda, Lin's presentation of three directions for the future analysis provides a solid platform from which an emerging body of research can proceed. Rosenbaum shows us how this analysis can be integrated into the timely discussion of affirmative action and other issues of social policy. Althauser and Kalleberg lay bare the prevailing models for examining internal labor markers allowing us a better understanding of the constraints and problems inherent in our approach to these processes.

In all, Breiger has presented us with an important contribution to the study of social mobility and social structure. Though the reader should be aware of the shortcomings of the first two sections of the book, the utility of this book for the student of social mobility is unquestionable.

Reviewer: JEFFRY A. WILL, University of North Florida
COPYRIGHT 1994 University of North Carolina Press

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility - Research in Social Stratification and Mobility is dedicated to publishing the highest quality, most innovative research on issues of social inequality from a broad diversity of theoretical and methodological perspectives. The journal is also dedicated to cutting edge summaries of prior research and fruitful exchanges that will stimulate future research on issues of social inequality.
Edited by Kevin T. Leicht, Department of Sociology, University of Iowa - http://www.uiowa.edu/~strat/index.htm

Mobility strategies in Sâncrai - Hunedoara
Sociologie Româneasca, 2001, 1-4, 232-249.
Abstract - This article intends to describe the changes of migrational flows in the last forty years (from the perspective of the presence / absence, volume and direction) in Calan area in the Hunedoara county. In order to point out this dynamic we have depicted the phenomena of territorial mobility in five different moments, which correspond to some important structural changes (collectivization, industrialisation, land reform, the possibility to emigrate, growing unemployment rate). Our premise is that an efficient method for identifying the particularities of a region is to thoroughly analyse the specific of a community belonging to that area. As a consequence, the field research focused on Sâncrai village which orbits mainly around the town Calan (the community was chosen, according to the principle of exemplarity, for its significance in perceiving the area in its entire, real functionality). The collected data are being confronted and completed with quantitative information ( the quest was completed by the people of two other localities - the Calan town and the village Strei). - sociologieromaneasca.ro/eng/2001/abstracts/sr2001.a12.htm

Abstract: Intelligent agents may contribute to higher technological growth, if assigned appropriate positions in the economy. These positive effects on growth are unlikely to be internalized on a competitive labor market. The allocation of talent depends on the relative award the market assigns to intelligence versus other individual merits, which will also influence intergenerational social mobility. - swopec.hhs.se/iiessp/abs/iiessp0635.htm

Social Mobility in Latin America - How is social mobility related to education policy in Latin America? A schooling gap regression analysis - Andersen, L.E. / Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas (IISEC), Universidad Católica Boliviana, La Paz, Bolivia - This paper proposes a new measure of social mobility, It is based on schooling gap regressions and uses the Fields decomposition to determine the importance of family background in explaining teenagers' schooling gaps. - eldis.org/static/DOC9630.htm

Poverty and social mobility in Lebanon: a few wild guesses - Inequality and poverty: a feature of the Shiite and the Sunni in Lebanon - Khoury El, M.; Panizza, U. / Workshop on the Analysis of Poverty and its Determinants in the MENA Region - The purpose of this paper is twofold. First of all, the paper aims at describing poverty in Lebanon and second the paper aims at measuring social mobility in Lebanon. Given that the only available household survey did not include data on income or expenditure, it measures poverty with a proxy for household wealth obtained by applying principal component analysis to a set of indicators of asset ownership.- eldis.org/static/DOC9146.htm

Conventions and Social Mobility in Bargaining Situations - in ELSE working papers from ESRC Centre on Economics Learning and Social Evolution - Giovanni Ponti and Robert M. Seymour - We find that, although any custom (when it operates alone) generates the same limiting class distribution as any other, these limiting distrbutions can be ranked with respect of their mobility. If players are allowed to change their custom when they find it unsatisfactory, then social mobility appears to be the key variable to predict the type of custom which will predominate in the long run even though, in general, no one custom is dominant. In particular, customs which promote social mobility appear to exhibit, in all the cases we have analysed, stronger stability properties. - econpapers.hhs.se/paper/elsesrcls/034.htm