What are the effects of decreasing social mobility? How does education help - and hinder - us in improving our life chances? Why are so many of us stuck on the same social rung as our parents? Apart from the USA, Britain has the lowest social mobility in the Western world. The lack of movement in who gets where in society - particularly when people are stuck at the bottom and the top - costs the nation dear, both in terms of the unfulfilled talents of those left behind and an increasingly detached elite, disinterested in improvements that benefit the rest of society. This book analyses cutting-edge research into how social mobility has changed in Britain over the years, the shifting role of schools and universities in creating a fairer future, and the key to what makes some countries and regions so much richer in opportunities, bringing a clearer understanding of what works and how we can better shape our future.

""The Social Ladder"" offers a comprehensive exploration of social mobility and stratification in modern society. This insightful book examines the complex interplay of factors that determine an individual's position on the social ladder, challenging the notion of a pure meritocracy. It delves into how education, income, occupation, and family background create a web of opportunities and barriers, shaping life outcomes across generations. The book traces the evolution of social stratification from feudal systems to the digital age, highlighting how changing economic structures have reshaped mobility pathways. It presents compelling evidence from longitudinal studies, cross-cultural comparisons, and economic data to support its arguments. One intriguing insight is the correlation between social position and health outcomes, demonstrating the far-reaching consequences of socioeconomic status. Through a blend of scholarly analysis and engaging case studies, ""The Social Ladder"" progresses from introducing key concepts to examining specific factors like education and occupation. It culminates in a nuanced analysis of how these elements interact to create patterns of mobility or stagnation. By balancing academic rigor with accessibility, the book offers valuable insights for social science enthusiasts, policymakers, and anyone seeking to understand the forces shaping their own life opportunities.

The study of education and social mobility has been a key area of sociological research since the 1950s. The importance of this research derives from the systematic analysis of functionalist theories of industrialism. Functionalist theories assume that the complementary demands of efficiency and justice result in more ‘meritocratic’ societies, characterized by high rates of social mobility. Much of the sociological evidence has cast doubt on this optimistic, if not utopian, claim that reform of the education system could eliminate the influence of class, gender and ethnicity on academic performance and occupational destinations. This book brings together sixteen cutting-edge articles on education and social mobility. It also includes an introductory essay offering a guide to the main issues and controversies addressed by authors from several countries. This comprehensive volume makes an important contribution to our theoretical and empirical understanding of the changing relationship between origins, education and destinations. This timely collection is also relevant to policy-makers as education and social mobility are firmly back on both national and global political agendas, viewed as key to creating fairer societies and more competitive economies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

This book contends that conventional class concepts are not able to adequately capture social inequality and socio-cultural differentiation in Africa. Earlier empirical findings concerning ethnicity, neo-traditional authorities, patron-client relations, lifestyles, gender, social networks, informal social security, and even the older debate on class in Africa, have provided evidence that class concepts do not apply; yet these findings have mostly been ignored. For an analysis of the social structures and persisting extreme inequality in African societies – and in other societies of the world – we need to go beyond class, consider the empirical realities and provincialise our conventional theories. This book develops a new framework for the analysis of social structure based on empirical findings and more nuanced approaches, including livelihood analysis and intersectionality, and will be useful for students and scholars in African studies and development studies, sociology, social anthropology, political science and geography.

A short, innovative book that outlines what we know about the declining state of social mobility in the UK and proposes what we should do to reverse this downward trajectory and make Britain a more mobile and just society.

This major comparative study of the social mobility of ethnic minorities in the US and UK argues that social mobility must be understood as a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon, incorporating the wealth and income of groups, but also their political power and social recognition. Written by leading sociologists, economists, political scientists, geographers, and philosophers in both countries, the volume addresses issues as diverse as education, work and employment, residential concentration, political mobilisation, public policy and social networks, while drawing larger lessons about the meaning of race and inequality in the two countries. While finding that there are important similarities in the experience of ethnic, and especially immigrant, groups in the two countries, the volume also concludes that the differences between the US and UK, especially in the case of American blacks, are equally important.

European integration is one of the most ambitious and socially far-reaching developments in world politics and in world economics. Against growing opposition and despite increasing social heterogeneity, the European Union continues to expand and to acquire new competences. But to what extent is the self-proclaimed "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe" a social reality? In which ways is the political European project anchored in social developments? How does social change impinge upon political integration? Societal trends in multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and socially diverse Europe have never been studied systematically. Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century sets to rectify this neglect of societal developments in Europe, providing a groundwork for the sociology of European integration. The book portrays social life and social relations in the enlarged Europe, and gives a perspective on the European Union as an evolving social entity. Handbook of European Societies is a pioneering source book analyzing the current social patterns on the continent. It covers a representative selection of major topics of social concern and sociological relevance, such as Collective Action, Consumption, Identity, Power Structure, Sexuality, Stratification and Well-being. Each contribution probes key developments in a strictly comparative manner. The Handbook thus offers a detailed look into the intricacies of the national societies of Europe and into the prospect of an emerging European society. The Editors have enlisted leading researchers to synthesize existing knowledge and to make use of many different data sources in a straight-forward style. The contributions stay away from jargon, simple labeling and sweeping assertions. Instead, they provide solid and accessible information on a wide variety of social trends and processes within and across European societies

Elite Networks presents a new explanatory factor behind the persistence of income inequality: extractive political power. Elite networks are informal social networks between politicians in power and top executives of politically connected firms where personal ties and long-term interactions build trust and loyalty between involved actors. Both groups draw benefits from these interactions; politicians stay in power, and corporate executives extract rents for their firms. Firms reward connected executives with higher salaries thus widening the dispersion of earnings in society. In Elite Networks, Vuk Vukovi? offers a different perspective on the long-run origins of inequality. Calling upon historical arguments and direct empirical evidence, Vukovi? argues that inequality is not an artifact of a particular economic system, but a man-made phenomenon rooted deeply within the, often violent, quest for political power. Further, he theoretically and empirically establishes the impact elite networks have on higher inequality. Offering a unique contribution to the field, this book argues that to lower inequality and prevent incentives of elite network formation, we must first and foremost lower centralized political power and re-empower the citizens and the community by rebuilding trust and relying on the democratic trial-and-error mechanism.

Social Invisibility and Diasporas in Anglophone Literature and Culture is a transdisciplinary study of social invisibility and diasporas which theorizes the differential in/visibility of diasporas through the prism of cultural productions (literature and the visual arts, including media studies) by both established artists and emerging ones.