Social mobility has been extensively documented based on two-generational associations. Whereas a few studies suggest that the approach related to social inequalities should be open to multigenerational associations, the topic of social mobility over multiple generations is still at its blooming stage. Very little is known about multigenerational effects on education in Britain and about empirical evidence of the mechanisms that underlie multigenerational effects. Drawing on the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Longitudinal Household Study, this thesis examines social mobility over three generations in Britain. The central aims of the thesis are to explore direct grandparental effects on grandchildren's educational and class attainments independent of parental influences. In particular, it focuses on mechanisms through which grandparental effects operate. The thesis finds that grandparental class is significantly associated with grandchildren's educational achievement, despite parental class, parental education, and parental wealth being taken into account. Regarding the mechanisms, the evidence suggests first that the impacts of grandparental class on education remain even though grandparents have passed away at the time of the survey, and second that the impacts disappear only when grandparents have only infrequent contact with the family. Furthermore, I find that grandparental effects are significantly stronger on grandchildren originating from advantaged parents than on those from disadvantaged parents, indicating the strong persistence of inequalities at the top of social stratification. The research also highlights significant, albeit modest, effects of grandparental class on grandchildren's class attainment over and above parental influences. For grandsons, maternal grandparental class still matters even after grandsons' education has been controlled for. In particular, self-employed grandparents have a strong impact on grandsons' likelihood of engagement in self-employment, a pattern that holds true even when parents are not self-employed. For granddaughters, neither paternal nor maternal grandparental class is found to have a direct substantial impact on granddaughters' class after granddaughters' education has been controlled for. The thesis suggests that the conventional social mobility approach based on parentchild associations may overestimate the effects of parental characteristics and underestimate the effects of family origins. Family advantages run deep; they are maintained over generations in Britain.

This thesis explores how Chilean teachers understand their life trajectories in terms of life-course change, socio-historical change and social mobility, examining whether they make distinctions between these different kinds of understandings of transitions. In a context of 40 years of transformations in Chile, teachers are used as a case-study for examination of the subjective dimension of social mobility, and people's sense of class location and inequality. Methodologically, this research adopted the approach of exploring people's sense of life course and social movement in its broadest sense, examining how teachers talked about their life trajectories in order to consider whether questions of social change, life-course change, social structure and social mobility featured. It is built on data collected through interviews with 41 teachers who live in Santiago, who were asked to outline their personal timelines as a way to reflect on the main changes which they regarded as significant in their life stories. The argument of this thesis draws on and contributes to sociological work on class and social mobility. Most social mobility research has been dominated by quantitative work about occupational patterns of movement, with subjective social mobility neglected because people's subjective understandings of social movement have been seen to be contradictory and inconsistent. It has been suggested that 'lay' understandings fail to distinguish 'social mobility' from socio-historical change and life-course change, so people fail to recognise the true extent of inequality and the limited nature of social mobility. This thesis foregrounds subjective social mobility and critically examines these assumptions. On the basis of my empirical research, I argue that the apparent inconsistences in 'lay' subjective social mobility disappear, or at least make more sense, when we locate people's understandings of social location, social change and social mobility within their broader sense of their life stories. These inconsistencies are partly the result of the complex ways in which people understand their life stories and position themselves within a broader social structure, and are best explained using an analytical focus which emphasises the multidimensional nature of trajectories in social space (Bourdieu, 1984) and a methodological focus which is sensitive to the multifaceted and practical ways in which people speak about their lives. The teachers in my sample resisted a linear summary of their timelines and issues of life-course change and socio-historical change also framed their accounts, adding additional layers of complexity to them, in narratives of trajectories along different dimensions which qualified or disrupted each other. Despite that the teachers framed their trajectories as complex, non-linear constructs, and some rejected 'social mobility' stories, they still all offered overall evaluations of their changing life circumstances. They looked beyond their own trajectories to make different sort of comparisons which helped them to establish a sense of relative social movement, characterising their lives as showing social improvement, stability or decline as different views of their relative social position, and of the social structure and inequalities. I argue that rather than focusing on whether or not ordinary people correctly recognise relative or absolute mobility, it is more pivotal to examine how these different understandings come into play when ordinary people reflect about their location in an unequal society. The thesis argues that subjective social mobility needs to be analysed in term of a multidimensional model of class location and class movement, and this also argues for a greater understanding of the complexities of issues of social location, trajectories and social mobility in which 'class' emerges in different way in people's accounts. Therefore, a more open-ended approach to how people understand their relative situation is needed, in order to explore whether and how issues of class position, social inequalities and social mobility feature in the accounts of 'ordinary' people when they discuss the key transitions of their lives.

Orientador: Laercio Fidelis Dias / Banca: Antônio Mendes da Costa Braga / Banca: Miriam Cláudia Lourenção Simonetti / Banca: Roque de Barros Laraia / Banca: Mônica Celeida Rabelo Nogueira / Resumo: A presente tese é um estudo etnográfico do grupo Mẽtyktire (Kayapó), na Terra Indígena Capoto/Jarina, aldeia Piaraçú, Norte do estado de Mato Grosso, a partir da categoria vernácula kukràdjà que, etimologicamente, significa algo que leva muito tempo para aprender. Por um lado, o termo é correlacionado com o significado de 'cultura', com aspas, um produto da autoconsciência étnica e um operador nos processos de demanda por direitos. Por outro, significa o "modo de ser", a maneira como os sujeitos veem o mundo a partir de sua cosmologia, um sistema de incorporação significativo dinâmico, como experimentam o vivido enquanto ser/estar no tempo/espaço e como agem para preservar o próprio modo de vida, articulando as mudanças de maneira a reproduzir criativamente a ordem cultural que se atualiza, mantendo a coerência do sistema que o engendra. Parte-se de uma descrição e análise do território, material e simbólico, e dos processos de territorialização entendidos como "modos de estar". Busca-se nas reproduções sociais presentes na ritualística, no cotidiano e no xamanismo, assim como em suas estratégias de mobilização social, elementos para pensar a aparente ambiguidade entre kukràdjà e (meta)cultura enquanto discurso. Os resultados apresentam o kukràdjà como um todo cultural que não se esgota e não se enrijece em processos identitários, visto que é do próprio "modo de ser" apropriar-se de elementos Outros para utilizar em seus próprios termos. / Abstract: The present thesis is an ethnographic study of the Mẽtyktire group (Kayapó), in the Capoto/Jarina Indigenous Territory, Piaraçú village, in the north of the State of Mato Grosso, from the vernacular category kukràdjà which, etymologically, means something that takes a lot of time to learn. On the one hand, the term is correlated with the meaning of 'culture', with quotation marks, a product of ethnic self-consciousness and an operator in the demand for rights processes. On the other hand, it means the "modes of being", the way subjects see the world from their cosmology, a system of significant dynamic incorporation, how they experience the lived as being in time/space and how they act to preserve their own way of life, articulating the changes in a way to creatively reproduce the cultural order that is updated, maintaining the coherence of the system which engenders it. It begins with a description and analysis of the territory, material and symbolic, and the processes of territorialization understood as "modes of being". The social reproductions present in rituals, daily life and shamanism, as well as in their strategies of social mobilization, are used to think the apparent ambiguity between kukràdjà and (meta)culture as a discourse. The results present the kukràdjà as a cultural whole that is not exhaustive and does not become rigid in identity processes, since it is of the own "way of being" to take possession of Other elements to use in its own terms. / Doutor

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-207). Also available on the Internet.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between middle class and higher education through higher education policy. While the society gradually form the social class, each of them will try to obtain as much resource as they could. However, most of the resource is controlled by the upper class, which, due to the incapable of self-improvement, will eventually cause the conflict between different classes. In order to prevent the class struggle and conflict, and to maintain the social harmonious, the stable existence of Social Mobility is critical and important. And the easiest way for lower class to flow upward, is the education. After the declare end of the marshal law, the main purpose of education innovation in our country, is to expand the chance for people to receive higher education, raise the standard of knowledge, and increase the national competitiveness. However, while fixing all the old issue by the execution of the innovated policy, the upcoming problems have already risen. After the KMT re-achieve the presidency, the Exective Yuan shows the determination of restrain depression by the announcement of forming firm and solid middle class. If the indispensable way of social flow, education, is malfunctioning, the forming is incapable as well. It¡¦s obviously that the importance and requirement of education is raised, and the higher education is also widespread. However, does higher education in our country play it¡¦s role of promoting social flow? Does the consequence of successively education reform cause positive (or even negative) impact on the social mobility? These are the factors that this thesis wants to investigate.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

Following decades of protectionism, in 1982 Mexico reacted to its foreign debt crisis by implementing extreme structural adjustment policies and it has continued a pattern of neoliberalism, increasingly opening its economy to international markets. The cumulative impacts of these policies have negatively affected the majority of the Mexican population, and researchers have documented the detrimental effects of neoliberal polices on working and middle classes in other contexts. Based on ethnographic research in Nogales, Sonora, this paper will describe a particular group of Mexicans who have nevertheless risen to middle class status throughout this time period. It will situate them within an industrializing border economy and will investigate some of the factors, both internal and external, that have contributed to their success in this endeavor. Finally, it will raise questions for future research, such as: Is this middle-class sustainable?

The racial wealth gap is a deeply inexorable indicator of inequality. Today the average family of color holds only six cents of wealth for every dollar owned by whites. What accounts for such stubborn inequality in an era lauded as racially progressive? Intergenerational family links suggest a major linchpin. In this dissertation I work toward a race critical theory of social reproduction, drawing on 156 family histories of intergenerational wealth transfer. These data were categorically coded for instances of wealth and capital acquisition and transfer, as well as qualitatively analyzed for thematic patterns using the extended case method. My analysis targets specific social mechanisms that differentially promote the transmission of wealth and other forms of capital (e.g., social networks, educational credentials) across racial groups over time. I isolate racial patterns in the mobility trajectories of families through an original construct, inheritance pathways – instances involving the transfer and/or interconvertiblity of wealth/capital between two or more generations. Among my sample, inheritance pathways were regularly traceable from ancestors living during legal slavery and segregation. My analysis reveals that the wealth and capital acquired by white families regularly works in interlocking, supportive ways to “pave” pathways of protected, intergenerational mobility over time. In contrast, though families of color evidence many efforts to build upwardly mobile pathways, they are frequently divested of their capital through both explicitly and subtly racist means. Moreover, the value of their capital is often diminished, making it less useful in launching and sustaining mobility pathways. My analysis hones in on the recursive relationship between micro level family actions and the racial state, which is regularly implicated in these processes. I draw on these data to additionally expand the concept racial capital – a type of “currency” that intersects with other forms of capital for individuals, families and groups. Collectively, the inheritance pathways of families suggest that whiteness often intervenes to (1) “unlock” forms of capital for some individuals/families/groups; and, (2) enhance the value of other forms of capital. Ultimately I argue that inheritance pathways and racial capital serve as primary means for reproducing conditions and meanings that sustain systemic racism over time.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-59). Also available in electronic version.