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.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de faire ressortir et d'analyser les facteurs liés à l'organisation spatiale de la population et des activités susceptibles de produire une mobilité plus durable. Sur la base du constat que le système de transports n'est pas durable, nous effectuons une approche par les coûts de la mobilité à partir de trois indicateurs représentatifs de la durabilité de la mobilité des ménages : les coûts annuels de la mobilité urbaine des ménages, le taux d'effort annuel consacré par les ménages pour leurs dépenses de transports et leurs émissions annuelles de CO2. Le lien entre forme urbaine et mobilité n'est pas simple. Il s'agit d'un lien de réciprocité complexe à définir. Les travaux montrent que trois dimensions de l'environnement local jouent au final sur la mobilité des ménages : la densité, la diversité et l'accessibilité. La démarche consiste à confronter les facteurs supposés explicatifs des indicateurs de durabilité de la mobilité des ménages et de déterminer quelle est la part expliquée par la forme urbaine. Sur le périmètre élargi de l'enquête ménages de Lyon (2006), notre approche par les coûts de la mobilité des ménages permet une approche des inégalités sur le plan financier. Par ailleurs, une simulation sur l'évolution des prix du carburant montre que les classes moyennes seront de plus en plus concernées par l'augmentation continue des prix du pétrole à l'avenir. Afin de déterminer la part des coûts de la mobilité expliquée par la forme urbaine, nous bâtissons des modèles explicatifs au niveau du ménage en y intégrant des variables de forme urbaine et variables socio-économique du ménage. L'analyse met aussi en évidence l'influence des pôles secondaires sur la vulnérabilité des ménages et les coûts de la mobilité. Les modèles par type de ménages montrent enfin que les effets de la forme urbaine sont différenciés suivant les types de ménage. Il est également intéressant de mesurer les économies générées par des changements marginaux de forme urbaine. Nous bâtissons pour cela des modèles économétriques à un niveau plus agrégé permettant le calcul de coefficients d'élasticité. En outre nous pouvons estimer en termes économiques les gains espérés suite à des changements de forme urbaine. / The aim of this thesis is to highlight and analyze the factors related to the spatial organization of the population and the economic activities which may produce a more sustainable mobility. By considering that the transport system is not sustainable, we measure mobility costs thanks to three indicators which represent the sustainability of household mobility: the annual costs of household urban mobility, the annual effort rate devoted by households to their transportation expenditures and the annual CO2 emissions. The link between urban form and mobility is not straightforward. Actually, it is a complex reciprocal link to be defined. The literature shows that three dimensions of local environment finally influence household mobility: density, diversity and accessibility. The method consists on confronting the factors alleged to explain the indicators of the sustainability of household mobility and on determining which part is explained by urban form. On the enlarged perimeter of the household travel survey of Lyon (2006), our approach based on household mobility costs enables, moreover, an approach to financial inequalities and introducing the notion of household vulnerability facing their transportation costs. In order to determine the share of mobility costs explained by urban form, we build some explanatory models, at the household level, by integrating urban form and socio-economic household variables. Especially the analysis focuses on the influence of secondary urban poles on the household vulnerability and mobility costs. Some explanatory models by household types show also that the effects of urban form are differentiated according to household categories. It is also interesting to measure the savings generated by marginal changes of urban form. To do that, we build some econometric models in a more aggregated level which allows computing elasticity coefficients. Thus, we can estimate, in economic terms, the expected savings that are triggered by urban form changes.

Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean and an unincorporated territory belonging to the United States (US), is facing an uncertain future as its population rapidly declines through emigration. The American public has only begun to pay attention to this problem in recent years as more and more Puerto Ricans relocate to the US mainland. This study therefore aims to understand the migration decision-making process of Puerto Ricans by exploring the underlying causes and motivations. In conducting qualitative research, the findings center on interviews conducted with seven Puerto Ricans who relocated from Puerto Rico to the US mainland between 1985 and 2018. Their reflections on their migration decision-making experiences demonstrate that the process is complicated, multi-focal, and multidimensional. Focusing specifically on the concepts of citizenship, migration as an adaptive strategy, and migration decision-making, the findings indicate that Puerto Ricans are US citizens in name only. They are more predisposed than other US citizens to relocate when faced with environmental and economic stress, yet not all Puerto Ricans have the desire, nor the ability to relocate. Despite the finite scope of this research, the findings nonetheless provide valuable insight into the ongoing trends of Puerto Rican migration