published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of educational tracking on a selected number of high school students in Atlanta, Georgia, in particular, in ABC School System in east Metro Atlanta. This study addressed institutional and individual racism as it interfaced with social mobility in educational tracking. The subjects in this study consisted of 50 high school students who have been tracked. Frequency Analysis in numbers and percentages were employed to analyze the data. A study was done in ABC high school. Results indicated that an overwhelming majority of the responses strongly agreed that tracking effected them negatively, and that they were tracked because of racism. Results also indicated that majority of the respondents strongly agreed that educational tracking effected their academic advancement and income. Attitudes of African American high school students toward high school tracking was used for this.

This thesis is about social class and economic inequality, using the Goldthorpe class schema. It tests theories claiming that social class is increasingly irrelevant to inequality and people's life-chances with data on incomes and material living standards from the British Household Panel Survey. It covers the period over which the survey ran, i.e. 1991-2008. During this time many prominent social theories dismissed class analyses while others sought to retain the class concept but dismissed its economic foundations, seeking to ground it in culture instead. Economic inequality has not figured highly on the agenda of class analysts, at least not those working with the Goldthorpe class schema. There is a substantial body of work on mobility, voting behaviour, income poverty and material deprivation, but inequality in a broader sense has for the most part been neglected. This thesis is a step towards rectifying this situation. Thus it provides new information about within-career social mobility as well as income inequality within and between classes, on whether income mobility reduces class inequalities over time, and cast light on class inequalities in material living standards. The findings suggest that class is far from irrelevant to economic inequality. Class differences in incomes are persistent, between class inequalities contribute more to inequality overall than within-class inequalities, and while income mobility does reduce class inequalities over time it is not to the extent that supports the hypothesis that class is irrelevant to people's economic fortunes.

Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork in suburban Hyderabad, India, this thesis contributes to emerging debates on the Indian new middle classes and postcolonial middle classes more generally. I challenge images of a homogenous middle class enjoying the benefits of liberalization by highlighting the diversity in wealth, lifestyle and access to opportunities within this class sector. Contrary to the pervasive image of a hedonistic and morally corrupt new middle class, I assert the centrality of moral discourses to the construction of middle-class identity in Hyderabad. Middle-class Hyderabadis engage in moral discourses of ‘respectability’ and ‘open-mindedness’ in relation to caste, consumption, education, and women’s public and domestic roles. These discourses of morality are central to the reproduction of class and gender inequality as successfully balancing the demands of respectability and open-mindedness is particularly difficult for those with fewer resources such as the lower middle class and for women who are expected to embody authentic Indianness in their demure comportment, ‘traditional’ attire and commitment to ‘Indian’ family values, but are also liable to being judged ‘backward’ if their clothing and lack of education and paid employment are seen to be in conflict with fashion and open-mindedness. The focus on balance and compromise in middle-class Hyderabadis’ narratives echoes other work on postcolonial middle classes that has emphasised people’s efforts to adhere to local notions of respectable behaviour that are central to national identities while also attempting to align themselves with a ‘modern’ global consumer culture. In contrast to much of this literature, however, I challenge the notion that modernity and tradition, the local and the global are objects of desire in and of themselves and instead argue that they function as important reference points in discourses that legitimate the dominant position of men and those of upper class-caste status.

Changes and developments of the educational instituion of Nigeria are discussed. The analysis is based upon available data. Historical developments, including social movements and nationalism, are related to changing educational needs of an emerging nation. Developments during the past twenty years are discussed in detail. Increased levels of education are related to social mobility, agencies and types of socialization, and the development of Nigerian independence. Demographic changes, particularly decreases in mortality and differential fertility, are described in detail. The demands for technical and vocational training are related to urbanization. Based upon analyses of these historical trends, recommendations are suggested which should better enable Nigeria to cope with the modern world.

I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to explore three dimensions of couples' career success: career input (hours), career output (wages) and happiness. I focus on West German parents because, until recently, they faced low levels of state-level childcare support and adverse attitudes towards maternal employment. I investigate the extent to which couples specialize in paid work in the long term. Previous approaches – even those using couple-level longitudinal data – failed to explore this fully, instead examining men and women separately, or a single transition. I develop a “dual curve” approach and find that even among the 1956-65 female birth cohort (which faced low state-level support for dual employment) only a fifth of all couples adopt full specialization in later life. A sizable proportion – a third – moves into dual fulltime employment, while half of highly educated couples adopt such employment. Highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialize but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. I explore whether the take-up of work hour flexibility relates to rises in both the respondent’s and their partner’s wages. Men and women benefit from working flexibly, even when controlling for selection into work hour flexibility with growth-curve and fixed effects analysis. Moreover, there is a positive cross-partner wage effect, which is particularly pronounced for mothers, suggesting that men – the main users of the policy – use this measure to support their wives' careers. Are dual career couples (equal human capital investment) happier than specializing couples? I create a human capital measure to account for differential human capital during periods of non-employment, which has been ignored in past analyses. I find that women in dual career couples are unhappier when the child is young but happier later in life. Conversely, women who give precedence to their partner’s career in terms of human capital investment grow unhappier.

This thesis investigates in what ways the family matters for educational outcomes. Six research questions are answered. First, is family size associated with familial resources? Second, is having a large family associated with lower levels of objective and subjective educational outcomes and has this changed over the 20th century? Third, is there evidence of an association between family size and emotional health and life perspectives of young people? Fourth, is there any evidence of an association between family size and the degree of confidence and sociability? Fifth, do parenting strategies vary by family size? Sixth, is there evidence if a causal relationship between family size and educational outcomes? The British Household Panel Survey, the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England and the ONS Longitudinal Study are used to answer these questions. The key findings from the observational studies are as follows. First, as family size increases there is a reduction in familial resources. Second, as a result of resource dilution there is a reduction in the highest qualification attained; this finding is robust to alternative measures of educational outcomes. Third, there is a positive relationship between family size and reporting poor emotional health and external locus of control. Fourth, there is some evidence that the manner in which the young person socialises varies by family size. Fifth, parenting strategies vary by family size; these strategies are positively associated with GCSE achievement and ameliorate the negative family size association. Sixth, testing the resource dilution model using twins as an exogenous increase in family size found that there is weak evidence of a causal relationship between family size and educational outcomes. This thesis addresses the influence of the family on inequalities in education. The findings have important implications for future research on this topic.

A pesquisa analisa as formas como as estratégias de mobilidade social dos policiais militares se articulam com o pertencimento à Polícia Militar do Pará. Procurou-se examinar as trajetórias individuais por meio dos papéis desses policiais no âmbito doméstico-familiar e das chances no mercado de trabalho, para compreender a característica do recrutamento institucional, e, por outro lado, analisar as trajetórias possíveis a partir do acesso à corporação policial-militar. Para tanto, a pesquisa apoiou-se na análise morfológica das distintas posições, sucessivamente, ocupadas pelos policiais, e na comparação entre suas trajetórias com base nos dados referentes à família de origem, escolaridade, ocupações pretéritas no mercado de trabalho, percepção sobre o acesso à corporação e à mobilidade interna com base em dados estatutários grau hierárquico e cargos funcionais. Foram entrevistados 22 praças e oito oficiais, dentre estes três mulheres, todas praças. Os resultados apontaram para a atração majoritária de homens com baixa escolaridade e vindos de ocupações precárias e desqualificadas para o estrato de praças; e de homens com o ensino superior incompleto e completo para o estrato de oficiais. Os praças dependem da continuidade da relação salarial assegurada pelo cargo público, e tendem a permanecer na mesma posição social após o ingresso na instituição, enquanto aos oficiais são possíveis trajetórias de mobilidade social vertical. A dependência social do estrato de praças é justificada internamente por uma retórica familiar, que representa a filiação institucional como uma associação moral baseada na honra familiar dos policiais, que os expõe ao paternalismo do corpo de oficiais e bloqueia suas chances de ascensão social. / The research analyzes the forms of associations of social mobility of the military police are articulated with the belonging to the Military Police of Pará. It was sought to examine individual trajectories through the roles of these police officers in the domestic-family environment and the chances in the labor market to understand the characteristics of institutional recruitment and, on the other hand, to analyze the possible trajectories from access to the corporation. In order to do so, the research was based on the morphological analysis of the different positions, in turn, occupied by the police, and on the comparison between their trajectories based on data referring to the family of origin, schooling, past occupations in the labor market, perception about access to corporate and internal mobility based on statutory data - hierarchical degree and functional positions. Twenty-two enlisted soldiers and eight comissioned officers were interviewed, these are three women, all enlisted. The results pointed to the majority attraction of men with low schooling and coming from precarious and disqualified occupations to the stratum of enlisted soldiers; and men with incomplete and complete higher education for the officers stratum. The enlisted depend on the continuity of the salary relationship assured by the public officers, and tend to remain in the same social position after joining the institution, while officials are possible trajectories of vertical social mobility. The social dependence of the stratum of enlisted soldiers is internally justified by a familiar rhetoric, which represents institutional affiliation as a moral association based on the family honor of the policemen, which exposes them to the paternalism of the corps of officers and blocks their chances of social ascension.