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Three major sections compose this paper: (1) education, equality, and mobility; (2) social origin and educational experience; (3) educational antecedents of occupational groups. Basically the paper discusses where Britain stands in what has been described as the 'century of the child' and in a period of high educational aspirations and hopes for social equality through the reconstruction of schooling. While section 1 discusses fundamental issues such as political choice and social philosophy, section 2 reports on an empirical study that sheds light on these issues, reporting on a comparison of the educational experience of the adult male population of England and Wales in 1949 and in 1972. Specific topics addressed here are the private school sector, the state secondary school system, status origin and schooling, status origin and further education, and origin, schooling, and university. The last section examines the educational antecedents of the hierarchy of occupational groups in British society in terms of the 'tightening bond' thesis. A supporting document commenting on Halsey's paper appraises the conceptual framework used by Halsey, and important questions that can be raised about the conception of social mobility used in his analysis are addressed -- the concept of status, two aspects of social mobility, and the two roles of education in social mobility. (Author/AM)

Introduced in 1971, the French "Continuing Vocational Training (CVT)" system was designed to promote workers'"socio-professional promotion." The contribution of its induced mobility to the fulfillment of this objective has always been considered as one of its key performance indicators. Outcomes of the CVT over the last 3 decades were examined, using the French National Board for Statistics' successive surveys on Vocational Training and Qualifications. The results confirm the general tendency of an increasing horizontal mobility in the workforce at the expense of a declining promotional mobility (known for its high link with socio-professional promotion). Various groups of employees were identified, from those needing structure to autonomous types dedicated mostly to their own careers. With the old industrial-model hierarchical structures disappearing and being replaced with flat organizations, fewer employees were dedicated to their employers and fewer were able to move into higher socio-professional employment categories. The second section of this paper examines the concomitant change in the dynamics of vocational identity formation processes affecting the performance of the CVT system during the same period. (Contains 27 references.) (KC)

The relationship between education and the economy is explained by opposing theories--functionalism and conflict. A way of assessing functionalism and conflict theory is to see if increasing educational attainment increases social equality. Higher educational attainment has occurred but has not led to an equal distribution of income. The extent of overeducation, workers with education in excess of job requirements, is a means of evaluating whether occupations are being upgraded at the same rate as educational attainment. Data from a national sample survey conducted in 1984, 1985, and 1986 by the National Opinion Research Center were compared to a Burris (1983) study using similar data from the years 1977-78. Overeducated workers showed a 3.5 percent increase over the years, but greater changes were in worker demographics. Workers with college degrees showed the greatest increase with 20 percent more women, blacks, workers from middle-class backgrounds, and workers 35 years of age and under being overeducated in 1984-86 than in 1977-78. Job satisfaction was examined for overeducation effects. Overeducation was a factor in job satisfaction with the slightly overeducated reporting the least job satisfaction. The findings of the study support the hypothesis that, although more people are acquiring higher levels of education, they are not in jobs comparable to their education. Conflict theorists say this is because of structural inequality in society. (47 references) (KC)

Economic decline in a community offering opportunities for higher education was studied as a contributing factor to extensive upward mobility among persons beginning their occupational careers. One process through which mobility into professional occupations by individuals whose fathers were manual workers ("elite" mobility) was documented--the need for the children of blue-collar workers to escape the industrial decline in their local community. Evidence came from the high levels of mobility into professional and managerial occupations experienced by graduates from blue-collar backgrounds in the 1946 class of a rust-belt community high school. For men, the mobility into higher status professional and managerial occupations arose primarily from the large proportion who continued with postsecondary education in the face of declining job opportunities at the local level. Very few women took advanced degrees. Only three women were in the higher professions or management, but a sizable minority achieved lower-status positions in these occupations. Women improved their participation in lower-status professions and management by leaving the community. Compared to noncollege men who moved, more of those remaining in the community were in lower management, few in high management, and none in the professions. (Appendixes include a list of 21 references and 3 tables.) (Author/YLB)

Reanalysis of a standard set of data for 16 nations has brought new insights into the leading issues of comparative social mobility. The reanalysis provides considerable support for the Featherman-Jones-Hauser hypothesis, which claims that there is convergence in mobility processes once conditions of occupational supply and demand are controlled. The hypothesis is modified, however, in two respects: First, it is qualified by the suggestion that uniformity in mobility regimes is not limited to highly industrialized societies but may apply equally to less developed societies; and second, it is elaborated through specification of the structure of the shared mobility regime. Properties of mobility shared by the 16 countries considered are: (1) symmetry of exchange between occupational strata; (2) equality of mobility chances off the main diagonal; (3) severe immobility at the two extremes of the occupational hierachy; and (4) considerable mobility in the middle of the hierachy. These findings of basic similarity do not preclude findings of deviation from the common mobility regime, which seem to be at least as much a consequence of political organization as of economic development. The effects of political and economic variables on mobility processes are more complex than commonly supposed because they differ across occupational strata. (Author/CMG)

In the past the economic dimension of ethnic assimilation has usually been studied in terms of occupational discrimination. This paper argues that the economic dimension of ethnic relations can best be studied through a broader theoretical framework: occupational assimilation. Occupational assimilation includes the entire process involved in the minority member's occupational career, such as opportunity for job information acquisition, job entry (hiring standard, screening process), internal allocative practices (initial position, mobility cluster, on-the-job training opportunity, job evaluation), monetary and non-monetary compensation, and chance of inter-organizational mobility. A case study of Korean immigrant workers in the Chicago area appears to support the above theoretical contention. In short, social and occupational assimilation are mutually interdependent. Implications of the findings are discussed, and directions of future studies in this area are suggested. (Author)

The conceptual framework in social mobility studies in terms of the theoretical and methodological orientation of the social mobility paradigm and its ideological connotations are discussed in the introduction of this paper. Other topics discussed in this section include the following: the inconsistency of the theoretical orientation, a theoretical reorientation of social mobility research, and the liberal-functionalist theoretical model and social mobility studies in Spain. A section on the contemporary Spanish society addresses some of the major contemporary changes in Spanish society and, more exactly, how some of these changes are understood and documented by existing mobility studies. The study of the overall changes in Spanish society and the expansion of formal education is found to be a challenge to the researcher. In the rest of the paper, attention is given to two main problems. First, the extent to which the Spaniards are profitting differentially from these educational benefits is explored. This is, by itself, a complex and many-sided question, and the research is limited to the influence of social origins on the educational attainments of student. Second, in relation to the consequences of educational changes, the effects of schooling on the occupational and economic status of the individual are estimated. (Atuhor/AM)

Social mobility is generally studied in three different ways: stratum mobility, intergenerational social mobility, and intragenerational or career mobility. This paper deals with the first two types of mobility and more with intergenerational mobility than with stratum mobility. The working hypothesis of both discussions is that, in general, a decline in inequalities has not occurred despite economic growth and the expansion of education. The question of inequality is at the forefront of this paper's analysis of intergenerational occupational outflow data, and the original hypothesis--that manual sons have not improved their mobility opportunities relative to those of nonmanual sons to maintain or improve theirs--is not sustained. In some countries examined the hypothesis seems true; in others, it is not. Explanations to account for why it goes one way in one nation and another way in a different country are needed. Labor markets (internal and external) are largely ignored in the study of the causes and patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility. The connections between schooling, social structure (e.g., ethnicity), and mobility should be key elements in research and in public policy formation. It is suggested that all results of this study must be taken with great caution and recognition that more and better understood data may overturn these findings. (Author/AM)

This study explored the effect of community background on the development of adolescent ambition, using longitudinal interviews to probe subjects' own definitions and evaluations of progress toward the "good life." Sixty high ability working class youths from three New England towns varying in size, urban proximity, and social class composition, were interviewed in their senior year of high school and again three to four years later. All youths perceived entry into high school as a critical juncture in the development of their ambition and all planned on college as a means to upward mobility. However, the youths' pursuit of mobility showed many different experiences. In the small working class town, students felt personally supported by both high school and parents and viewed occupational mobility and small town life as desirable and compatible. Going away to college introduced them to diversity, stimulating an interest in personal growth and a devaluation of small town life. In the larger working class city, students found the high school very unsupportive and relied on adults outside the school system, primarily family, for reinforcement. As commuting college students, they had to work hard at balancing the competing demands of school, family, and friends. In the middle class town, students experienced an academic status loss as they entered high school and found themselves to be in vulnerable social positions. These experiences triggered early self questioning. For these students, self doubts, community estrangement, and the search for congruence between personal and occupational goals intensified at college. The paper concludes with a discussion of the developmental processes through which socioeconomic and community variables are translated into effects upon individuals. (Author/RM)

This paper discusses a survey undertaken in 1981 to investigate the influence of education on occupational realities and expectations of high school graduates in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The specific focus of the survey was on the effect of high school graduation on the young indigenous population's mobility expectations, pursuit of higher education, job aspirations, and job opportunities in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere. The hypothesis was that expanded educational facilities and access tend to increase expectations without providing occupational opportunities to satisfy those expectations. The sample consisted of all Virgin Islands high school seniors on St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John in May, 1981. Of the 961 questionnaires returned, 945 were valid. Initial analysis of the questionnaires indicated several patterns of mobility, including that students sent abroad (generally to the United States or Great Britain) probably would not return to serve the Virgin Islands as their occupational possibilities were greater elsewhere, students educated at schools and colleges in the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean in programs designed specifically to meet local needs were likely to seek and find work in the Virgin Islands, and people with a broad education often felt alienated from their peers. The conclusion is that the net effect of higher education is more a negative than a positive factor in the development of a microstate such as the Virgin Islands. Additional research is suggested to determine the roles played by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, and academic achievement in the outward mobility of students in the Virgin Islands. (DB)

This survey of the literature on methods of analysis to measure equality of educational opportunity and social mobility emphasizes methods of analysis rather than substantive results. It also sketches some potentially important work using transition matrices and vacancy chains. Much is also done with two-way tables, sometimes summarized into two categories (nonmanual and manual) in each generation. Most of what is known about mobility is due to the combined scaling and multiple regression approach. Implicit in this approach is the view that variation among individuals in occupational level depends on ascribed and achieved characteristics, and that regression can break down the variance between characteristics that may be classified as ascribed and those classifiable as achieved. Rather than regression of all of the measurable causal characteristics simultaneously, the most effective work seems to use path coefficients in which some characteristics influence other through intermediate characteristics. Two problems are discussed in the summary section; that of how unmeasured characteristics such as having an honest appearance, or being motivated to material success are distributed, and also how to apportion the measured characteristics to the categories of ascribed and achieved. (Author/AM)

In contrast to the European immigration to the United States, the African immigrant encountered economic, psychological, and emotional disorientation to such an extent that these effects continue to influence and mold the lives of Afro-Americans. This document explores the Afro-American immigrant experience through a study of some of the plays written by August Wilson. "Fences,""Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" are analyzed from the perspective of the black experience in terms of past events and to explain the present in terms of a history which includes emigration from the rural South to northern U.S. cities. The effects of this migration on Afro-American family life and on individual blacks are examined by analyzing excerpts and passages from plays which highlight the anger, frustration, and exploitation of blacks and the resultant instability of the black family. (JHP)

The main purpose of this paper is to examine how the demand of firms for prospective em-ployees equipped with particular skills and other characteristics affect status mobility between firms. We attempt to answer this question by analyzing how individual employment opportu-nities shape upward status mobility. Even though theoretical considerations and a few empiri-cal studies strongly suggest that individual career outcomes are much affected by structural opportunities, remarkably little is known about this process and whether it differs for men and women. This is due to the fact that both the conceptualization and measurement of labor-market opportunities still constitute pivotal problems of sociological labor-market research. Our paper contributes to this open research field by proposing a novel way of measuring la-bor-market structures. We propose an individual-level, time-dependent, and multidimensional measurement of labor demand. This enables us to examine the direct effects of macro struc-tural processes on individual labor market careers. Based on previous research, which shows remarkable gender variation in occupational mobility processes, we expect the consequences of structural change to be different for men and women. Our analyses are based on two data sets. The first provides annual occupation-level informa-tion on the number of advertised jobs (Swiss Job Advertisement Study). It serves to construct various time-dependent indicators for labor demand. The second data set provides monthly individual-level information on occupational careers of two birth cohorts (Swiss Life History Study). In order to examine our research question, we link these two data sets and run event history models. The results show that the likelihood for upward status mobility of Swiss men and women is indeed affected by changing labor demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]