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This paper examines the patterns of entry into self-employment in urban and rural China and across different reform stages, focusing on how communist cadres have responded to new market opportunities. Analysis of data from a national representative survey shows that both education and cadre status deter people from entry into self-employment in urban areas but not in rural areas. However, urban cadres have become increasingly more likely to be self-employed over time, and only those who became self-employed in the late reform stage have enjoyed higher income returns. The paper concludes that the labor mobility process should be taken into account in studying changes in advantages/disadvantages associated with different social groups in post-socialist transition economies. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure and 9 notes.)

This paper compares men's career opportunities and intra-generational class mobility across periods with markedly different development strategies in Mexico. Despite its significance for social stratification and inequality in Mexico, research on mobility has been relatively scant in recent decades. Using data from the National Retrospective Demographic Survey, my analysis connects development strategies to individual career opportunities by comparing intra-generational class mobility across three cohorts of Mexican men. Results show that occupational opportunities failed to keep pace with rising human capital in Mexico under the neoliberal regime. Instead, entry and mobility into good jobs became more difficult to achieve and downward mobility more prevalent even among highly educated workers.

In this paper, we use multilevel growth-curve analysis to model occupational stratification across West German careers for cohorts born between 1919 and 1971. We argue that a life-course approach gives a more appropriate perspective into social stratification by focusing on the permanence of inequalities across human lives. With data from the German Life History Study (GLHS), our primary interest is in the amount and timing of career progression and the ways in which educational attainment, class background, and cohort context shape them. We confirm previous findings of limited career progression and permanence in occupational inequality. Thus, career mobility can correct for initial disadvantages only to a limited degree. We also confirm the strong role played by the standardized and stratified German educational system, which channels workers into specific occupations with strict boundaries. We find a substantial gross effect of class background, which is strongly mediated by educational attainment for women but not for men. We do not find any general indications of a trend in change across cohorts, although there are some weak indications that men who entered the labor market in the problematic 1970s had weaker career growth. We conclude by discussing the advantages of a life-course approach to occupational stratification and the possibilities of growth-curve analysis to answer pertinent questions in research on careers and occupational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When employers conduct more internal hiring, does this facilitate upward mobility for low-paid workers or does it protect the already advantaged? To assess the effect of within-employer job mobility on occupational stratification, we develop a framework that accounts for inequality in both rates and payoffs of job changing. Internal hiring facilitates advancement for workers without strong credentials, but it excludes workers at employers with few good jobs to advance into. Analyzing Current Population Survey data, we find that when internal hiring increases in a local labor market, it facilitates upward mobility less than when external hiring increases. When workers in low-paid occupations switch jobs, they benefit more from switching employers than from moving jobs within the same employer. One-third of this difference is due to low-paid workers isolated in industries with few high-paying jobs to transfer into. An occupationally segregated labor market therefore limits the benefits that internal hiring can bring to the workers who most need upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital (SC) plays a fundamental role in immigration by easing entry into a new environment. We advance a novel approach to assessing the role of SC for immigrants' labor market incorporation. First, we isolate the impact of SC activation from the mere presence of potential help. Second, we disentangle the diverse components of migration-related SC by distinguishing between individual migration- (IM) and community migration-level (CM) connections in the country of destination. Third, we trace the roles of IM SC and CM SC across multiple labor market outcomes, ranging from the search to secure the first job to the quality of the first job to longer-term occupational mobility. Absent activation, IM SC has virtually no impact on any of the outcomes. Rather, migrants' IM SC yield their fundamental impact when activated, contributing to a successful job search while steering them into first jobs that are of lower-quality relative to their pre-migration occupation. By contrast, CM SC facilitates the initial job search and filters immigrants into higher-quality first jobs. Moreover, immigrants who arrive when CM SC is at its most mature stage reap the clearest benefits in improving their occupational status. These findings underscore the importance of both early settlement IM SC and CM SC in the processes of immigrants' labor market stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how workplace technological innovation is associated with individual-level employment turnover. We advance the literature by studying how the impact of technology differs for Dutch native workers and workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds. Furthermore, we examine the disparate impacts of organizational context, as indexed by the proportion of workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds and workplace job volatility, as well as industry-level unionization. Using large-scale Dutch matched employer–employee longitudinal data for the period 2001–2014, we find technology implementation to decrease chances of job ending, but this innovation protection is smaller and sometimes absent for workers with non-Western immigrant backgrounds than for native Dutch workers. This pattern is most marked for first-generation immigrants and immigrants from non-Dutch-speaking countries. We also find evidence of organization-level ethnic competition effects among low and middle educated workers, but not for workers with tertiary degrees. Among lower educated workers technological displacement is exaggerated in workplaces that employ many workers with immigrant backgrounds, although unionization mutes this effect. Among middle educated workers technological displacement is exaggerated in high-turnover workplaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Focusing on white U.S. men aged 25-34, this paper compares the patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility in a late 19th century sample to those found in the well-known 1962 and 1973 surveys of Occupational Change in a Generation (OCGI and OCGII). While the overall pattern of mobility indicates less upward mobility and greater occupational inheritance among the 19th century men, the differences are small when comparisons are restricted to the nonfarm sector. Results from association models indicate a stronger relationship between origins and destinations in 1962 than in the late 1800s. In contrast, the 1973 OCGII data shows a virtually identical relationship between origins and destinations to that found in our 19th century sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Previous research suggests that British and American systems of social mobility are organized around different traditions and principles that produce similar mobility outcomes. In this paper we explore the implications of Turner' s distinction between sponsored and contest educational systems for the process of occupational career mobility in Great Britain and the United States. We use data on matched labor market cohorts from the Occupational Changes in a Generation Survey Il and the Oxford Social Mobility Study to examine the linkage between the education system and the occupational structure in the two countries, as well as the role of "further education" in the career process of British men. The results indicate that despite substantial differences in the way in which education and occupational credentials are obtained, the degree of openness in the two societies is about the same when one looks at occupational status ten and twenty years after labor force entry. We find, however, a notable degree of difference between the two societies in the process of career mobility. The results suggest that "sponsored" and "contest" are oversimplified labels for the differences in the career processes of British and American men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Focusing on occupational change and mobility, current research on stratification has largely ignored some processes of structural change and mobility that are central to classical and contemporary class theories. In this paper, class mobility is assumed to depend in part on four structural changes in the organization of production: (1) a shift from agricultural to industrial forms of production; (2) a decline in self-employment and personal or family ownership of farms and businesses; (3) an expansion of the industrial working class; and (4) an expansion of the industrial manager class location. Analysis of class mobility in six capitalist societies (the United States, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia) reveals that the sizeable differences among them in total class mobility can be explained largely by differences in the structure of classes. Apart from these structural differences, the societies shared essentially the same class mobility regime--one characterized by considerable rigidity of class boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper clarifies the relationship between opportunity and mobility: first, by analyzing the ways opportunity differentials are created into three generic possibilities--through positional, historical, and resource variation; and, second, by uncovering certain logical relations that exist between opportunity differentials and differences in the amount of career mobility individuals experience. The first point offers a useful classification for ordering and comparing diverse theoretical approaches to career mobility. The basic conclusion of the second point is that all differences in career mobility between groups of individuals are logically explained by differences in the opportunities to move to which they are exposed and, further, all differences in the career mobility of individuals are due to chance variation within the constraints of the logically true aggregate relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Increasingly, sociologists concerned with occupational mobility and the changes in the occupational distribution are turning their attention to the structural conditions for such changes. One important change has been industry shifts, particularly the decline of agriculture and the growth of services. In this paper we argue that industry shifts have an important effect on changes in the occupational structure. Using a shift-share approach, changes in the occupational structure of the U.S. between 1960 and 1970 are decomposed into an industry shift effect, an occupational composition effect, and an interaction effect. These effects vary for major occupational categories, but for total U.S. employment the industry shift effect accounted for about two-thirds of the change in occupational structure, the composition effect for one-third, and the interaction effect was negligible. It is not likely that there will be as important shifts in the industry structure during the next 30 years as in the last 30 years. But it has been the industry shifts that have mostly contributed to an expansion of the higher status occupations, particularly professionals and managers. Therefore, unless the occupational composition changes in such a way as to compensate for the diminishing effects of the industry structure, structural opportunities will either remain at current levels or even decline in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Previous research concerning the linkages between women's occupational origins and destinations has applied models developed for the study of men's intergenerational occupational mobility. In this paper, we use an approach that incorporates two unique aspects of women's occupational experiences. First, we consider housework to be a possible occupational outcome for women. Second, we consider the occupations of mothers as well as those of fathers in the portrayal of women's occupational origins. We show that this approach more fully displays the influences of occupational origins on women's subsequent occupational activities. In particular, we find that women whose mothers worked are themselves more likely to join the labor force, and their occupations are likely to resemble their mother's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Observing a plethora of small entrepreneurial activities in the cities of developing countries, this paper examines the social significance of these occupational activities. The data gathered from a Korean city suggest that small entrepreneurship provides occupational niches to marginal migrant workers as well as an alternative to the bureaucratic channel of upward social mobility for a significant proportion of urban residents. These findings are interpreted by using the conception of occupational situs, which promises greater analytical utility in the study of developing societies than the unidimensional conception of occupational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluates how authorization status shapes job transitions among Mexican and Central American immigrants in the United States. Specifically, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we impute legal status and track employment histories for authorized and unauthorized workers, as well as native-born counterparts, in the less skilled labor market. We distinguish job moves based on changes in occupations and employers; and by linking workers' jobs to expected wages in their occupations, we are able to determine whether job transitions result in occupational upgrades or downgrades. Results reveal that unauthorized immigrants have lower adjusted rates of job mobility, consistent with arguments that their lack of work authorization "traps" their employment. Moreover, when unauthorized migrants do change jobs, their transitions are characterized by a process of occupational churning in which they cycle between similarly positioned jobs and have low rates of upward mobility, both within and across firms. We also test the possibility that the wage returns to job mobility are conditioned by legal status. Finally, we find that the penalties to job mobility associated with unauthorized status are more severe for women than men, potentially because of their high levels of segregation in socially isolating jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a set of user-generated data, we examine patterns in the careers of professional chefs. We argue that this is one of many cases in which careers must be understood as shaped by dual structures—the typical occupational structure within a firm, and the organization of firms in a larger field. We then demonstrate how career trajectories may be formalized as movement through a two-dimensional space defined by status in these structures. Building on previous ethnographic work finding that chefs understand the logic of their careers as involving repeated trade-offs between their occupational status (their rank within the kitchen) and organizational status (the status of the restaurant at which they work), we attempt to determine how different trajectories are associated with different outcomes. We find that, despite the somewhat random nature of entrance into the culinary profession, future top-tier chefs disproportionately begin their careers at high-status restaurants. Beyond their auspicious beginnings, these top-chefs-to-be also commonly devote their early careers to maximizing organizational status, forgoing promotions to higher kitchen ranks in favor of low-level jobs at more prestigious restaurants. By comparison, chefs destined to run lower-status restaurants tend to spend their early careers prioritizing rapid advancement within the kitchen, only pursuing jobs at more prestigious restaurants much later in their careers, with limited success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job mobility offers opportunities for workers to obtain wage increases, but the returns on job changes differ considerably. We argue that part of this inequality results from a trade-off between occupational and regional mobility. Both mobility types offer alternative strategies for improving one's labor market position; however, each type also has unique restrictions. The high costs of regional mobility can thus induce occupational changes, even though the resulting human-capital devaluation leads to lower wage increases. We use linked retrospective life-course data for Germany (ALWA-ADIAB) and apply competing risks models to show that restrictions on one type of mobility drive individuals toward the other type of mobility. Using fixed-effects regressions, we then show that regional mobility yields higher wage improvements than occupational mobility does. We argue that restrictions on both types of mobility thus not only determine which type of mobility is chosen, thereby helping explain differential careers, but also contribute to inequality in wage trajectories due to differential returns on job mobility. The trade-off has explanatory power for the inequality between certain actors with different sets of mobility restrictions, such as parents and non-parents or employees in jobs with different skill demands, and it may also contribute to our better understanding of broader patterns of inequality—for instance, that caused by between-nation differences in job mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that increasing job mobility leads to increasing economic inequality. In this study, I argue that an increase in job mobility can be inequality reducing, depending on the macro-structural context in which job changes become more frequent. I demonstrate empirical evidence by applying a new analytical approach to data from the South Korean economic crisis of the late 1990s. I find that rates of job transitions increased significantly during and after the economic crisis, and that more frequent movements between jobs ameliorated the rising trend in inequality: in other words, inequality in occupational status after the crisis would have been even greater had it not been for changes in the pattern of transitions between jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We follow female college graduates in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and compare the trajectories of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-related occupations to other professional occupations. Results show that women in STEM occupations are significantly more likely to leave their occupational field than professional women, especially early in their career, while few women in either group leave jobs to exit the labor force. Family factors cannot account for the differential loss of STEM workers compared to other professional workers. Few differences in job characteristics emerge either, so these cannot account for the disproportionate loss of STEM workers. What does emerge is that investments and job rewards that generally stimulate field commitment, such as advanced training and high job satisfaction, fail to build commitment among women in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following two decades of Mexican migration to the southern United States, the second generation is entering the labor market. We analyze the early occupational careers of fifty-eight second-generation young adults in Dalton, Georgia, a global carpet-manufacturing center. We find intergenerational occupational mobility, with children of Mexican immigrants deploying human-capital skills to access better jobs than their parents. However, the Mexican second generation faces opportunity ladders structured along gender lines, with women working in services and men laboring as bilingual supervisors and crew leaders in the carpet industry. While bilingual skills play a critical role in the employment paths that members of the second generation have started to chart, their use of bilingualism is also shaped by gender dynamics in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the long-term trends of two parallel and related gender effects, in light of the hypothesis that highly rewarded occupations will be the most penalized by the process of feminization. Using multilevel models of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data from 1970 to 2007, the study analyzes trends in women's occupational mobility and juxtaposes these trends with trends in the effects of feminization on occupational pay across diverse occupational wage groups. The findings reveal two opposing processes of gender (in)equality: during this period, many women had impressive success in entering highly rewarded occupations. Simultaneously, however, the negative effect of feminization on the pay levels of these occupations intensified, particularly in high-paid and male-typed occupations. Consequently, women found themselves moving “up the down staircase.” The findings confirm the dynamic nature of gender discrimination and have broad implications for our understanding of the devaluation and exclusion mechanisms discussed in earlier literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the gender differences in job mobility in urban China. Conceptualizing China's postsocialist transition as a multi-faceted process, we argue that the emergence of labor markets, gendered role differentiation within the family, and the state's declining involvement in promoting women's rights lead to widened gender gaps in job mobility. Event history analysis of data from six coastal cities finds that married women are less likely than their male counterparts to change jobs for career advancements, but are more likely to experience family-oriented job changes and involuntary terminations. The gender gaps in career-oriented job changes and involuntary terminations have also widened considerably during the reform period. We interpret these findings as the joint results of economic, socio-cultural and political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational mobility trend is compared using SSIC versus Prestige and SEI scales. A preliminary survey of what occupational scales measure leads to a contrast between older, normative stoles and a norm-independent conception of occupational dominance. Dominance ma), be assessed by three convergent algorithms that assess relative rank by taking averages over origins and destinations. These are shown, to a good approximation, to be averages over advantage, no matter how advantage is indexed. Data from the OCGII and subsequent NORC General Social Survey are analyzed. The dominance results replicate as consistent contrasts with SEI. Trend is summarized as non-decreasing and quite possibly increasing intergenerational rigidity. Tentative evidence of big shake-up after 1986 is presented. The declining role of education in access to rank and as mediator of ascription is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has examined the impact of occupational segregation on the gender gap in wages. This research clearly implies that men and women are sorted into dissimilar career tracks. Unfortunately, the few studies on the career impacts of occupational segregation are inconclusive because of reliance on anecdotal evidence, research done in a single firm or in the public sector, and problems in measuring career mobility. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), two employment transitions of prime age white workers were examined: upward wage mobility and transitions into joblessness. Information on the percentage of males working in the respondent's occupation was merged into the PSID. In the presence of controls, percentage of males in the occupation was positively related to men's chances of receiving a wage promotion. For women, occupational segregation positively influenced movement to joblessness The results support the notion that women in male-dominated occupations do not move up the career hidden but rather are pressured to move out of these positions. The article concludes with a call for additional research on the relationship between gender dynamics in the work setting and individual career paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on guanxi networks of exchange and job mobility in China and Singapore. It provides a comparative analysis of the relative efficacy of strong and weak contact ties in job mobility in two fast growing East Asian economies, China and Singapore. Because market economies are imperfect in circulating labor market information through formal means, researchers have looked at contact networks as an informal information channel through which persons are matched to jobs. In China, where jobs were assigned by state authority before the emergence of labor markets in the early 1990s, job seekers who had close relationships with job-assigning authority at higher levels tended to obtain, better jobs. When these relationships were weak or nonexistent, job seekers would approach authority indirectly through their relatives or friends who were in close contact with those in charge. Studies of other East Asian countries or areas have also indicated similar tendencies about the importance of strong relative to weak ties in labor markets. Chinese society has long been known for its emphasis on guanxi as a guiding principle of economic and social organization.

The article examines the role of the white ethnic neighborhood for assimilation versus the persistence of ethnicity. It employs a geographic mapping strategy to identify ethnic neighborhoods as clusters of proximate census tracts where a particular group has a disproportionate share of the population. The white ethnic neighborhood is viewed with uncertainty by sociologists. In contemporary research on ethnic segregation, the assimilation perspective is represented by the theory of spatial assimilation. Its basic tenet is that residential mobility follows from social mobility and acculturation. As members of minority groups establish themselves in American labor markets and acquire the cultural skills to function outside of ethnic enclaves, they leave behind less successful members of their groups and convert socioeconomic and assimilation progress into residential game. An alternative view is that ethnic neighborhoods can survive despite the socioeconomic mobility of group members. The article examines these opposing perspectives by investigating white ethnic neighborhoods in the Greater New York metropolitan region in the period from 1980 to 1990.

In this article, we examine patterns of occupational and organizational mobility among Japanese men. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that Japanese men often change employers as well as occupations during their careers. Using a conceptualization of internal labor markets that distinguishes between firm internal labor markets (FILMs) and occupational internal labor markets (OILMs), we tested various hypotheses about the determinants of four patterns of job shifts formed by cross-classifying firm and occupational mobility. Our results suggest that men in larger organizations (who we assumed are more apt to be in FILMs) are more likely than those in smaller firms to experience within-firm, mobility, while men in tiny firms make more across-firm shifts. In addition, men in professional and technical occupations (who we assume are more likely to be in OILMs) experience more within-occupation mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial dominance of West Point cadets, measured from their graduation portraits, is known to be related to cadets' ranks at the military academy, but it has been reported to be unrelated to their ranks in later career (Mazur, Mazur & Keating 1984). With improved methods of data collection and analysis, we show that cadets' facial dominance, while still unrelated to their ranks at midcareer, is related to promotions in late career, 20 or more years after the portraits were taken. These results suggest that the absence of physical features from current models of status attainment is a serious omission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]