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Previous research on social mobility in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has confined itself exclusively to the linkages between male occupational origins and destinations. In this paper, three unique aspects of the Irish occupational mobility experience is investigated. First, the question of women's intergenerational occupational mobility is considered for the first time. Second, as in some recent North American research, traditional models of male intergenerational occupational mobility are modified to allow only the occupational achievement of mothers in the portrayal of a woman's occupational origins. Third, the occupational category of housewife is included as one possible occupational outcome for Irish women. The general conclusion of this paper is that not only does a mother's occupational attainments more realistically display the influence of occupational origins on women's subsequent occupational activities, but one vital component of this influence must be the occupational category of housewife. Only via the introduction of both these elements may the notably ascriptive nature of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in relation to female occupational mobility become understandable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a report of the main findings of a reliability study carried out in association with the 1972 Oxford Social Mobility inquiry. The original sample consisted of some 10,000 men interviewed in England and Wales. The reliability study involved re-interviewing a representative 10 per cent of the sample after a lapse of two years. After initially exploring the reliability of occupation (position on the Hope-Goldthorpe scale) and distinguishing this from its stability over a period of two years, the analysis proceeds to examine the basic set of stratification variables. The raw correlations tot the full 1972 sample are adjusted in the light of the reliability findings, and the adjusted values are employed in path analyses. The main substantive conclusion of the paper is that education is more a disrupter than a transmitter of the influence of paternal social standing on respondent's occupation. The main conclusion of the reliability analysis, apart from the estimates of the reliability coefficients, is that measurement errors are not entirely independent of one another. Finally, some comparisons with a comparable American inquiry are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a model of intergenerational mobility and intragenerational inequality that allows us to explore the relationship between economic growth and social mobility. The model is used to analyse the neo-liberal theory of stratification and to assess the consequences of some of the criticisms that have been made of it. In particular, the intergenerational transmission of wealth and privilege, and the existence of ethnic, gender and other forms of ascriptive disadvantage, reduce economic efficiency, although they do not always diminish the extent of social mobility. Furthermore, excessive intragenerational inequality may inhibit, rather than encourage, economic growth. We show that there is no necessary link between rates of social mobility and levels of economic growth. This, we suggest, provides an explanation of why rates of social mobility show very little cross-national variation and display no very evident trend over time towards greater societal openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a cross-national comparative analysis of social inequality in the former Federal and Democratic Republics of Germany. Social policy in the GDR reflected a conflict between egalitarian and meritocratic conceptions of justice. Against this background, I attempt to determine whether or not half a century of communism reduced class inequalities of opportunity in East Germany, relative to those in the Federal Republic. I argue that the study of social mobility suggests little progress was made towards achieving this goal. Attitudinal data indicate that the perceived failure of the East German authorities to create a more open society may have exacerbated the problem of regime legitimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on the article "The Attenuation of Class Analysis: Some Comments on G. Marshall, S. Roberts and C. Burgoyne, Social Class and the Underclass in Britain and in the USA'," by Lydia Morris and John Scott that appeared in the 1996 issue of the "British Journal of Sociology." Marshall et al's paper, Scott and Morris argue, may be located within the Nuffield programme of class analysis. They are critical of the departure of this programme from what they see as its Weberian origins. They argue that as a consequence Marshall et al fail to distinguish between individual class situations and Weberian social classes; the latter being demographically constituted collectivities that are formed through intra and inter-generational mobility, through relations of household formation and inter-marriage, and through a myriad of status-related social relations such as informal interaction and friendship. Scott and Morris conclude that, as a consequence of their failure to make this distinction, Marshall et al. do not address the really significant sociological question of whether the underclass can be said to exist as a real social class. Scott and Morris are also critical of a number of other features of the Nuffield programme, such as the seemingly arbitrary class labeling of the nominal categories of the different versions of the Goldthorpe scheme.

The history of social mobility has been a study of male mobility experiences. That is, not only have females been excluded by intention from these investigations, but, more importantly, it is argued that this omission is justifiable and legitimate. This is particularly so in relation to the British Isles where the heated defence of the traditional position, presently labelled the conventionalist approach, continues to rationalize and justify the exclusion of over one half of the British and Irish population. Drawing together recent North American, British and Australian research, this paper challenges both the theoretical and empirical assumptions of this conventionalist position. Arguing that a woman is neither simply a summation of domestic identities nor is her status one of complete dependency, national and international evidence on the unique and important contribution of women to the occupational attainments of husbands and children, as well as the class reproduction of families in general, is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high point of research investment in mobility research was in the early 1970s, when three major national surveys of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland absorbed very substantial proportions of the spending of the SSRC on sociology. Only the Oxford Social Mobility Group retained a sufficiently large team of scholars to sustain active work on the data collected, although the number of publications that have subsequently made use of the three data-sets must now be several hundred in number. The dismal economics of large-scale survey research have since prevented ant similar follow-ups of mobility per se, but there have been some smaller specialist studies and new data have been derived from other sources. Both the range of articles featured in this paper, and the secondary analysis referred to, demonstrate how the original paradigm of mobility research and has become modified. Social mobility is now not so much a single area of sociology as four or arguably five connecting clusters of work. The first, not least in terms of paradigmatic dominance, concentrates on discovering and describing large-scale flows of people between social origins and social definitions. It is this which gives rise to our knowledge about patterns and rates of mobility.

Sociological writing on social mobility has neglected to consider whether upward social mobility is linked to an individual's geographical mobility. This paper argues that there is no necessary link, but that in post-war Britain, where much intra-generational social mobility has been linked to workers' being promoted through internal labor markets of bureaucratic organizations this frequently means that these workers have to be re-located to different sites of that organization. In these circumstances there is a significant -- though under-researched -- link between social and spatial mobility. I argue that this type of upward social mobility is however becoming less important as public and private sector organizations have retrenched in recent years. Hence the link between social and spatial mobility has declined. I speculate on the implications of this for patterns of class formation and political alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]