Sociology and Social Mobility
Do any of the following apply to you: Are you white? Did you attend a school or college where most of your peers went on to University? Are your parents in skilled-manual, managerial, or professional occupations? Do they own their own home, or earn more than £25 000 a year?
If you’re taking a University degree, it’s more likely than not that you’ll answer yes to some of these questions. Most University students are not typical of the general population, but are drawn from more privileged social backgrounds.
Although the numbers of students going to University are rising, young people from the poorest social backgrounds, many of them from ethnic minorities, are still much less likely to study for a degree. Around 10% of young people at the bottom rung of British society go to University, compared to over 80% of those from professional or managerial backgrounds.
Sociologists are interested in the ways that social inequalities are reproduced in society. They argue that education plays a very important role in either strengthening or breaking down inequalities, and helping to promote upward social mobility. (‘Social mobility’ means the movement of individuals and groups between different socio-economic positions. ‘Upward social mobility’ means movement into a higher socio-economic group). Recently, sociologists have identified a new division emerging between the life chances of those who experience higher education and those who do not. At every level, far from helping to tackle social inequalities, and promote mobility, the education system can leave the poorest young people behind.
In this month’s interview, Anthony Giddens talks about social mobility in contemporary society, assesses the role of education, and gives his personal views on what we need to do to make Britain a fairer, and more equal, society.
What role can education play in promoting social mobility?
Education shouldn’t be seen as a panacea for all society’s problems. It has a significant role to play, but we can’t hold schools and Universities solely responsible for promoting social mobility. It’s important not to think of the education system as if it works in a vacuum – factors like changes in employment and the economy, and the social determinants of children’s educational attainment, are critical in determining patterns of mobility.
Sociologists make a distinction between structural and individual mobility, and it is a very important one. Individual mobility means that, as one individual moves up, another inevitably moves down. Structural mobility, by contrast, comes about because of wider social changes, primarily in patterns of employment. Some important British sociological studies, for example by Goldthorpe and colleagues in the 1980s, have found that most recent upward mobility is due to fundamental changes in the economy. These studies emphasise that a good standard of education and appropriate training is crucial to individuals’ chances of success, but education alone doesn’t explain what’s been happening. Over the past three decades or so, because of the steep decline in the UK of manufacturing industries such as garment-making or ship-building, traditional working class jobs have dried up. At the same time, there has been an expansion of more skilled, middle class jobs in the service industries. Most of the mobility since the 1960s has therefore been due to these wider structural shifts – children from working-class backgrounds have had good chances of moving into white-collar jobs, and becoming more prosperous than their parents, because the proportion of those jobs has expanded relative to others.
More recently, a study looking at the mobility patterns of British people born in 1958 and 1970, found that levels of social mobility have been declining. The study’s authors concluded that this is due to the relationship between family income and educational attainment – children from poor backgrounds tend to do less well at school, don’t stay on at school after 16, and don’t go to University.
This tells us that we also need to look at inequalities within education itself. A key problem is that the education system often ends up reinforcing wider inequalities, rather than reducing them. For example, in the UK wealthy middle class families often deliberately move into a good school’s catchment area, so that their children are guaranteed a place at the best school in the area. This pushes up house prices, meaning that poorer families, who can’t afford to live there, are excluded from the highest achieving schools.
That’s why I say we shouldn’t look at education in a vacuum – what’s happening in wider society (and thinking about how this interacts with education) is really important.
How else can we bring about greater social mobility?
As I just said, education is significant, but it’s also important we think about the wider social context. Countries with the highest rates of mobility, such as the Scandinavian countries, have invested heavily in children and young people, for example by funding free child-care for working parents. In Scandinavia, child poverty levels are around 5%, but in the UK these nudge closer to 20%.One of the lessons we should learn from the Scandinavians is that mobility increases as inequality decreases. Reducing inequality and creating greater chances of mobility are not alternatives, but are interdependent. We have to work to tackle the root causes of inequalities if we are going to establish a fairer society.
In your view, how successful has the Labour government been in tackling the kind of inequalities you just mentioned?
Labour’s view has been that economic stability and consistent economic growth are the keys to lifting people out of poverty. It is difficult to think of a single area of government intervention since 1997 where there has not been some kind of policy related to inequality: Child Tax Credit; Working Tax Credit; Pension Credit; the minimum wage and the New Deal; Child Trust Funds and child benefit increases; Sure Start and the Child Care tax credit – the list goes on and on. The government’s emphasis on work within the welfare system has been attacked by some critics, but getting a job, with appropriate safeguards, is the best way of moving out of poverty.
My own view is that we are moving in the right direction. However, in spite of the kind of policies I just mentioned, the UK remains scarred by widespread poverty, including child poverty, and in terms of social inequalities still compares unfavourably to other European countries.
But I can’t tell you – in fact no one can – whether or not any of these policies will increase upward social mobility in the long term. It takes a minimum of thirty years to really know how socially mobile someone is, because we are comparing the jobs and other achievements of people today with those of their parents, and assessing what the differences are. For example, most of the students beginning University in the autumn of 2007 will have started school under a Tory government – and research tells us that these early years are critical in determining later educational success or failure. This makes it hard to assess exactly how the education policies of the current Labour government are impacting on mobility. We also don’t yet know how students just starting University will fare in later life. We need to take a much longer-term view.
One thing is certain. As they build lives for themselves, the students who are starting University in 2007 will face different social problems to the ones experienced by their parents’ or grandparents’ generations. If we are going to transform our society, we need to tackle head-on the new challenges facing us at the beginning of the 21st century, such as the growing intensity of global economic competition, rising numbers of elderly people in the overall population, and the individualisation of lifestyles. Dealing with these new realities is crucial if we are going to create a fairer society.
Additional materials
Guide to researching social mobility in Sociology
As social inequalities, and the related issue of social mobility, are such central themes in sociology, you’ll find material relevant to researching these issues throughout the 5th edition of Sociology. The main chapters to look at are Chapter 9 on Stratification and Class (particularly p. 327-332), and Chapter 10 on Poverty, Social Exclusion and Welfare (especially p. 354-356). To help you understand the changing employment patterns, and increased global economic competition, mentioned by Anthony Giddens in the interview, take a look at p. 54-58 in the chapter about Globalization and the Changing World. To understand the role played by education in relation to social mobility, go to Chapter 17 on Education, particularly the sections on p. 684-687, and p.687-720.
Internet links
http://www.suttontrust.com/
Organisation providing educational opportunities for young people from poor backgrounds. Includes summaries of numerous empirical studies of the relationship between education and social mobility. (Go to http://www.suttontrust.com/annualreports.asp and scroll down to the second half of the page to see summaries of recent research)
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/
Website of the British government’s Department of Children, Schools and Families. Includes summaries of government policy, and numerous data on the education system, including school league tables. For information on Universities and other training, see the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills at: http://www.dius.gov.uk/
http://www.jrf.org.uk/child-poverty/
2006 report on child poverty in the UK by a charitable foundation, updated with recent data in 2007.
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf
Summary of research that concludes declining social mobility is due to the link between educational attainment and family income. This is the second report mentioned by Anthony Giddens in the interview.
Other books by Polity
Poverty by Ruth Lister
Sample PDFs: Table of Contents | Introduction
Ruth Lister introduces readers to the meaning and experience of poverty in the contemporary world. Her book embraces the relational, cultural, symbolic as well as material dimensions of poverty, and makes important links between poverty and other concepts like social inequalities and exclusion. It also looks at how people can be lifted, and lift themselves, out of poverty.
Published in 2004
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Education and Society by Rob Moore
Sample PDFs: Table of Contents | Introduction
This book offers an accessible introduction to the sociology of education. It introduces students to the key theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks in the sociology of education, including the links between education and social inequalities. A central concern is with inequalities of class, gender and race and their treatment by different sociological perspectives.
Published in 2004
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Copyright © Anthony Giddens 2007
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