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The páramos of Boyacá in Colombia are earmarked for delimitation to prevent the expansion of the agricultural frontier and protect endemic flora that contribute to water provision for cities. A varied conservation toolbox will be used, including the creation of protected areas for re-wilding and the 'sustainable' transitioning of livelihoods identified as environmentally destructive. Agriculture and cattle livestock farming has been identified for transitioning. Despite the negative discourse related to livestock holding, this paper argues that small-scale agropastoralism contributes to re-peasantisation and provides the foundations for an agrobiodiverse conservation approach. Agropastoralism facilitates re-peasantisation through strong socio-economic networks, interconnected communities, the solidarity economy, and self-management of natural resources. Whilst, agropastoral mobility spatially binds social networks across large and disconnected spaces. Mobility is also fundamental to dynamic land access and pasture management, as it prevents over-grazing. This exemplifies how resilient socio-economic networks and mobile production strategies could be harnessed for agrobiodiversity, instead of land sparing and other sedentary 'green' economies. This paper makes conceptual contributions to 'autonomy' in re-peasantisation by empirically demonstrating the importance of mobile and flexible systems of production. It also makes a novel methodological contribution in applying a spatial lens that further unpacks how movement across the páramos facilitates autonomy and re-peasantisation. These themes are explored using interview data from 53 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and small-scale agropastoralists from across the páramos and field observation. The paper concludes by recommending a harnessing of agropastoral knowledge, to potentiate agrobiodiversity, for a more socio-ecologically just approach to farming and conservation in the páramos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educational outcomes of the descendants of migrants are important indicators of migrants' incorporation into host societies and an indicator of intergenerational social im/mobility. This paper examines this relationship using data from a survey that follows a cohort of young adults, born between 1988 and 1997, who grew up in Switzerland. It looks at the relationship between the educational output of respondents and their parental migratory background, with the theoretical consideration that the family's social capital is a starting point in the descendants' trajectories. The paper is based on secondary data and exploratory cross-sectional quantitative analyses. The results highlight first a correspondence between migrant parents' national origins and their socio-economic status—in other words, an 'ethno-class'. Second, they show differences in educational outcomes between migrants' descendants and native Swiss as well as between the migrants' descendants themselves—which indicates a segmented incorporation process for both the first and the second generation, in confirmation of previous research. Third, results show that parental background and language region of residence are statistically significant in determining the level of education achieved by the migrants' descendants, especially those with a low socio-economic status. Their social mobility is 'limited', and they remain mostly in vocational education. The paper concludes that the Swiss school system still fails to include the most unprivileged and that a glass ceiling remains for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts a comparative and exploratory study on altruistic and pay-to-stay care systems, exploring the intersection of tradition and contemporary society. The research delves into the underlying mechanisms of both care systems, shedding light on the daily lives, challenges, and vulnerabilities of older women residing in care homes. Emphasising the state's and market's evolving role in the older care system, the study highlights the relatively recent market invasion. Employing an exploratory and descriptive research design, the sample comprises fifty-six women aged 60 and above in Lucknow city's (Uttar Pradesh, India) care homes. Given the heterogeneity among women in care homes regarding social and moral values, the study utilises multi-stage random, stratified, and purposive sampling techniques as needed for the analysis. Data had been gathered from two care homes— one not charging residents and another a paid facility catering to lower-middle and middle-income groups. The researcher spent a year and a half working in these homes, conducting interviews with all respondents. The paper uncovers distinctions in care homes based not only on altruism and pay-to-stay but also on caste and class dynamics, contributing to social inequality and limiting social mobility. The stratification of the State and market results in varying quality of life for older women. While the market holds potential for innovation and improved service quality, economically dependent women often defer this choice to their family members. Socioeconomic status significantly influences the decision to lead a dignified life, with some women reluctantly relying on the state for survival after being abandoned by their families, leaving them hapless and hopeless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on our fieldwork in Yunnan Province and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, this paper explores the different ways in which Chinese rural women engage with the rising industry of e-commerce livestreaming related to agricultural products and villages. Our analytical framework is informed by feminist political economy, which pays heed to the gendered social settings, operation of power, and entanglement between women's domesticity and productivity that underpin people's economic activities. We argue that Chinese rural women's simultaneous empowerment and disempowerment by e-commerce livestreaming are characterized by "mobile immobility", a term inspired by Wallis's (2013) research on rural women's technological empowerment by mobile phones a decade ago. On the one hand, this latest form of e-commerce has created an apparently accessible path for rural women, who tend to be geographically immobile, to achieve social mobility by becoming professional webcasters and/or vloggers. On the other hand, this enablement is in fact classed, aged, and preconditioned on in-laws' support and willingness to share these women's domestic duties, which are not guaranteed. The urban-oriented digital economy of e-commerce livestreaming capitalizes on rural young women's femininity, docile bodies and labor as well as the reproductive labor performed by their family members at the microlevel, reinforcing the urban–rural disparity at the macrolevel. The paper ends with reflections on the role of information and communication technologies and e-commerce in the development of rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a framework to examine how neighborhood factors influence criminal justice (CJ) contact and contribute to disparities across multiple stages of the justice process. By conceptualizing the punishment process as a dynamic set of decision-making points, this study highlights the role of neighborhood context in shaping offenders' CJ trajectories and post-CJ residential inequality. Using Harris County, Texas, as a case study, this research considers individual-, neighborhood-, and event-level variables to understand the cumulative effects of neighborhood characteristics on CJ outcomes. This study underscores the critical need to investigate neighborhood mobility and its broader implications for community development and public policy. The findings can be supported by extensive data from the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers and the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System, offering a robust analysis of offenders' spatial patterns and economic transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the scientific discussion on Pareto—at least from the sociological side—has focused on what is the core of his theory, that is, the relationship between social heterogeneity, circulation of élites and ruling classes. In this paper, the greatest attention is instead paid to the part that I would define as a cornerstone of Pareto's elitism, namely the one that looks at the mechanisms of production and reproduction of social inequalities and the related processes of mobility. In a sense, the focus of the analysis has shifted from the political dimension (the governing élite) to the social dimension (the non-élite). If the premises of Pareto's analysis are still fundamentally nineteenth century (there is basically a physical, moral, and intellectual diversity among human beings), his reading of the social composition of a country (the reference is often to Italy) it is of remarkable originality, as I try to demonstrate by considering specific social groups, in their family, status and class connotations. In my opinion, a hermeneutical complexity uncommon among his contemporaries emerges, where one can fully breathe the spirit of the twentieth century (enhancement of emotional factors; causality of values; cultural heritage, representations, and beliefs; etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poverty's impact on children's academic outcome is a cause for concern in most urban Asian cities as education is viewed as one of the main channels of social mobility. Few studies examined how poor children's hope could be enhanced through school social support. Objective: This paper examines how children from low-income families' perceived frequencies and importance of social support from teachers and classmates, influence their levels of hope in academic achievement. Method: Utilizing a partially-mixed sequential design—first, with survey data from a larger study on low-income children (n = 513), this paper explores if perceived frequency of social support is associated with level of hope as well as the role of perceived importance in moderating the frequencies of school social support on sense of hope; second, to enrich the child-reported results, two in-depth focus group discussions with elementary school teachers (n = 10) were conducted. Results: Statistical analysis reveals that the frequency of social support from teachers and classmates is associated with the level of hope in low-income children. Furthermore, when teacher's support was rated important by children, there was a positive association between social support and hope. Integrating statistical results and qualitative insights, this paper extends extant literature on social support typologies with a novel category; 'support in providing opportunities for success'. Conclusion: This paper underscores the important role schools play as a source of social support for children. Such social support aids higher hope levels in low-income children which could translate into better academic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With trends of urbanisation on the rise, providing adequate housing to individuals remains a complex issue to be addressed. Often, the slow output of relevant housing policies, coupled with quickly increasing housing costs, leaves individuals with the burden of finding housing that is affordable and in a safe location. In this paper, we unveil how transit service to employment hubs, not just housing policies, can prevent individuals from improving their housing conditions. We approach this question in three steps, applying the workflow to 20 cities in the United States of America. First, we propose a comprehensive framework to quantify housing insecurity and assign a housing demographic to each neighbourhood. Second, we use transit-pedestrian networks and public transit timetables (GTFS feeds) to estimate the time it takes to travel between two neighbourhoods using public transportation. Third, we apply geospatial autocorrelation to identify employment hotspots for each housing demographic. Finally, we use stochastic modelling to highlight how commuting to areas associated with better housing conditions results in transit commute times of over an hour in 15 cities. Ultimately, we consider the compounded burdens that come with housing insecurity, by having poor transit access to employment areas. In doing so, we highlight the importance of understanding how negative outcomes of housing insecurity coincide with various urban mechanisms, particularly emphasising the role that public transportation plays in locking vulnerable demographics into a cycle of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of 'informal' financial practices in shaping the resilience of immigrant urban communities, many of which are centered around families—nuclear, extended, and chosen. It looks at financial transactions and services, with particular attention to Rotating Credit and Savings Associations (ROSCAs), whose members are frequently related to each other through ties of kinship, especially in Hispanic circles. In a pioneering study documenting ROSCAs, they were defined as associations where members agree to make regular contributions of money to a fund that is given to each contributor in rotation. Because of their presence in various cultures and geographies, researchers from various disciplines have studied them, mostly in developing countries and immigrant communities within the United States. It is argued that such mechanisms substitute or complement formal financial services that do not fulfill their needs and play a key role in the infrastructures of immigrant communities to be resilient in the face of adverse circumstances. Findings from the present study's fieldwork, conducted in one neighborhood in New York City's South Bronx, show that these kinds of groups address the members' short-term safety and resilience needs. However, given their low returns and unclear procedures to address wrongdoings, they entail higher risks for long term planning and social mobility. Nevertheless, given their persistent and organic nature across cultures and borders, they provide important insights to address those gaps and shed light on the contributions of family dynamics to the public domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the restoration of the Gaokao (College Entrance Examination) in 1977 and the nationwide higher education expansion that started in 1998, millions of rural students have enrolled in urban universities. Though Chinese rural students' educational trajectories have received extensive attention, their subjective experiences in the rapidly changing context of the higher education system remain insufficiently represented in the literature. This paper utilises a life history approach to explore three successful rural students' journeys towards and through higher education, graduating from university in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Through interweaving the social context and individual accounts in this paper, I examine how educational aspirations (as individual choices and strategies) are shaped by changes in the social milieus in which one is situated and how rural students perceive classed differences in the context of an expanding urban–rural divide. I highlight the point that rural families' aspirations towards higher education are not simply personal preference but rather are constructed within the nexus of perceived limitations and opportunities and are complexly shaped by the social and economic context. I argue that, though the forms of symbolic domination might vary across the studied timeframe—from clothes to extra-curricular activities to comprehensive ability—the rural students' disadvantaged situation in the urban university remained largely unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the interest nowadays played by the concept of cosmopolitanism in contemporary schools of critical thought through different and interconnected perspectives. The article reads some deconstructive, culturalist and postcolonial rewritings of the Kantian notion of cosmopolitanism, with a focus on the network of 'refuge-cities' functioning on global cooperation, as offered by Jacques Derrida; with the cosmopolitanism 'from below' indicated by the sociologist Stuart Hall; with the 'plurality' of cosmopolitanisms claimed by Gayatry C. Spivak to be taught in formal education. The paper's attention then follows what Achille Mbembe claims as the political urge to the institution of a 'cosmo-nationality', and the necessity of a 'planetary thinking' conceived for the advent of 'cosmotechnics' as it is advocated by the influential scholar Yuk Hui. The main idea of the paper develops in the section devoted to 'cosmo-po/ethics', which played the focus of the critical attention of the International Conference organized on the emergence of its theme, in 2010, at the University of Durham, in Britain, to then migrate into some radical contributions to the debate; here those signed by the philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, who uses its address to the ethics of black feminist thought, and those 'proudly' performed by the poet Sanjlia Patel in her 'Migritude'. At the heart of the article's interest lies the conviction that, nowadays, philosophy, critical thinking and aesthetics constitute the arenas where it is possible to think and practice the invention of forms of cosmopolitanism that might contribute to a different respect for the 'other', where to shape the rights for the planetary mobility experienced by all people on earth, and to produce the cosmic thinking necessary to the surge of technology which is still unresolved, unconfronted and uncontrolled by modernity, finally, experiencing and experimenting the vision of the ethics of liberation and justice for all living creatures in the cosmos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the extent to which longitudinal surveys are able to expose occupational mobility and the dynamics of these processes. It compares two survey designs: the repeated panel design and the retrospective life history design. This comparison details the strength and the weaknesses of the two designs. The paper particularly calls attention to the unique features of the two designs with respect to the exploration of occupational mobility - pointing to three general problems of quantitative social research: item-nonresponse, design effects of single and multi-measurement occasion, and the strong assumption that researchers and respondents share the same definition of concepts. The main conclusion of the paper is that both designs offer unique opportunities to study social change, yet the differences between the two should be kept in mind when choosing the data set for particular research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instrumental Stakeholder Theory has begun to suffer from what might be termed "mission drift." Despite its initial success in creating a foothold for ethics in managerial decision-making, the efficiency arguments which now dominate this research stream have become counterproductive to the original goal of connecting ethics and capitalism. We argue in this paper that the way forward is by re-centering contingency, conversation, and inefficiency in stakeholder theory. To start this process, there needs to be a reckoning of some unintended impacts of the success of the instrumental stream of stakeholder research. For a contrasting approach, we draw on Richard Rorty's pragmatism and its foundation of ethical "irony," a state of continuous doubts about the utility of one's moral vocabulary. We offer a Rortian approach to stakeholder theory, unearthing the possibility for new corporate target functions in the goals of harm reduction, solidarity, and social mobility, the foundational building blocks of an ironist ethical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that most of the resilient literature tends to focus on Western contexts, and the western-based research may have limited applications for policy and preventions in Asia, this issue attempts to examine educational resilience in Asian or Eastern societies to complement the wealth of research in the western-based research. In Asia, a large number of children live in challenging family environments such as poverty, increasing labor migration, increased divorced and associated factors. Investigating the pathways to educational resilience, particularly focusing on the protective factors that can buffer the negative effects of low socio-economic status or dysfunctional family environments or migrant family environments on Asian children's educational outcomes has significant implications. In this research, we found that, in Asia, education is a key vehicle for individual's social mobility, and factors from the school, home, and community may increase students' chances of success by buffering the effect of some of the stressors from family on academic and personal success. This issue adds an empirical support from the East to Ungar's (2012) social ecology framing of resilience. This paper also provides evidence that suggests efforts by educators to promote resilience should be tailored to the unique risks to which a sub-population of children and youth is exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a case study of a girl student, this paper attempts to draw linkages between science classroom, gender and the larger discourse on the economy and job market. The ideal science student is constructed through classroom interactions, and a particular ideal is fostered which is highlighted in this paper. This paper sets itself to locate the micro-processes such as the classroom interactions, pedagogy and textbooks in the larger macro-context of economy, social mobility and jobs. It draws from the critiques of meritocracy and neoliberal ideology to present the arguments. Through an ethnographic approach, the study focuses on the experiences of students in science classrooms. The school chosen is located in an urban context in India. Examples from the classroom interactions and discussions with the students reveal how certain kind of conduct is promoted in the classroom. Through the description of dreams and aspirations and notions of science and scientists of a girl student, this paper argues that the learning of science is situated in the context of globalisation and neoliberal ideology. The classrooms, pedagogy and notion of aspirations and mobility seem to foster this economic discourse. This paper points to the fact that there is a need for alternative approaches in the teaching of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some may say the rise of parochial, sectarian populism has indicated a failure of civic education. On the other hand, it might be said to demonstrate the increasing power of some alternative forms of education. This paper hopes to shed light on how ordinary people learn in ways and through means that are at odds with the experiences of scholars and elites. To do so it explores the intersections of education, technology, and social mobility, to highlight how people learn social class, and learn in classed ways outside schools. In contrast to the dream of information liberty, this article considers how online media is marked by private control of information, often retracing and broadening gaps between social classes. The article provides a theoretical understanding of the relationship between technology and education and the linkages of class and media consumption. It then integrates these topics by exploring how online learning through segmented social media operates to reproduce class and facilitate and mobilize sectarianism. This paper concludes with a recommendation for more focus on the study of class by philosophers interested in education for democracy and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of merit is at the core of intense contemporary debate related to social justice in general and meritocracy in particular. In this paper, I aim to differentiate the notion of merit from two other notions with which it is often mistakenly identified, namely the concepts of talent and achievement. Here, I define "merit" as the value of an action that 1) is imputable to a subject's free conduct, 2) implies some sort of effort, and 3) is oriented towards a good. Merit so understood is a valuable phenomenon considered from various perspectives, and therefore the subject who has it deserves to be properly recognized. But, more importantly, this merit is valuable in a sense that is different from the value attached to talent and achievement. We should therefore try to recognize the three of them according to their specificity. I conclude by signaling some problems and limitations associated with the idea of merit that, on the one hand, contribute to the aforementioned confusion and, on the other hand, show that the principle of merit must not be absolutized to the detriment of other forms of value (including talent and achievement). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunistic sensing has become an appealing mobile crowd sensing (MCS) paradigm due to the fact that it can reduce the energy consumption and cost of cellular network connections. However, its success rate and transmission speed depend on the social interaction and mobility patterns of nodes. In this paper, we provide a spatiotemporal opportunistic transmission method for MCS networks. Firstly, to characterize the mobility patterns and social attributes of nodes more precisely and combine their advantages, this method defines spatiotemporal encountering and visiting parameters related to specific space-time units for nodes in a MCS network. Further, to realize reliable opportunistic transmission across regions and time intervals, this method searches publishers or participants of sensing tasks in a space-time unit according to the spatiotemporal encountering parameters of nodes in the unit and tracks the publishers or participants across the space-time units according to the spatiotemporal visiting parameters of nodes. The simulation results verify that the proposed method can achieve higher success rate with less transmission delay than existing typical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs) have been widely used as a primary data source to study friendship inference. Traditional approaches mainly focused on exploring pairwise co-location frequency, that it, the more frequency two users co-location, the more likely that they are friends. Such methods fail to solve the geographically restricted friends recommendation. In this paper, we tackle a novel friendship inference problem: cross-regional friendship inference, i.e., inferring whether users from different regions are friends. By revisiting mobility and social friendship of cross-regional friends based on a large-scale LBSNs dataset, we spot that cross-regional users are likely to form friendship when their mobility profiles are of high similarity. To this end, we propose Category-Aware Heterogeneous Graph Embedding Framework (CHGE) for inferring cross-regional friendship. We first utilize multi-bipartite graph embedding to capture users' mobility neighbor proximity and activity category preference simultaneously, then the contributions of Point of Interest (POI) and category are learned by a category-aware heterogeneous graph attention network in an unsupervised method. Extensive evaluations on the real-world LBSNs dataset show that our CHGE significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches by up to 9.7% on Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) and 7.3% on Average Precision (AP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-lasting scientific and policy debate queries the impact of growth on distribution. A specific branch of the micro-oriented literature, known as 'pro-poor growth', seeks in particular to understand the impact of growth on poverty. Much of that literature supposes that the distributional impact should be measured in an anonymous fashion. The income dynamics and mobility impacts of growth are thus ignored. The paper extends this framework in two important manners. First, the paper uses an 'intertemporal pro-poorness' formulation that accounts separately for anonymous and mobility growth impacts. Second, the paper's treatment of mobility encompasses both the benefit of "mobility as equalizer" and the variability cost of poverty transiency. Several decompositions are proposed to measure the importance of each of these impacts of growth on the pro-poorness of distributional changes. The framework is applied to panel data on 23 European countries drawn from the 'European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions' survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing residential mobility is said to challenge existing social support systems as mobility raises geographic distances between family members. Since family social support is essential for health and well-being, this study investigates whether residential mobility affects familial social support following changes in proximity to family and kin. By applying a stepwise linear regression on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, this paper is looking at variations between different residential mobility trajectories regarding social support provision and spatial proximity to family members in Germany over a 10-year period. Our findings show that people who are moving within Germany are receiving significantly more social support from their family and kin, while internationally mobile respondents receive less compared to non-mobile people. Mediation analyses show that proximity to family and kin are accounting for the negative effect of international mobility on social support but cannot explain the positive effect of internal migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under income-differentiated mortality, poverty measures suffer from a selection bias: they do not count the missing poor (i.e., persons who would have been counted as poor provided they did not die prematurely). The Pre-Industrial period being characterized by an evolutionary advantage (i.e., a higher number of surviving children per household) of the non-poor over the poor, one may expect that the missing poor bias is substantial during that period. This paper quantifies the missing poor bias in Pre-Industrial societies, by computing the hypothetical headcount poverty rates that would have prevailed provided the non-poor did not benefit from an evolutionary advantage over the poor. Using data on Pre-Industrial England and France, we show that the sign and size of the missing poor bias are sensitive to the degree of downward social mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceived government corruption is an important indicator of depressive symptoms. Recent studies have explored the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms in a cross-cultural context, but the underlying mechanisms need further research. This paper examines the impact of perceived government corruption on depressive symptoms in China and the moderating role of social status. Based on the 2018 wave of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS2018), 14,116 respondents aged between 16 and 96 were selected. The results revealed: (1) Perceived government corruption was significantly positively correlated with depressive symptoms. (2) Social class had an inhibitory effect in moderating the relationship between perceived government corruption and depressive symptoms. (3) The moderating effect was only significant for respondents who received education between junior high school and a bachelor's degree. The findings provide policy implications for developing countries and transitional societies like China. To build a more psychologically healthy society, we need to strengthen anti-corruption, stimulate social mobility, and improve people's sense of gain in the future [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arab-Palestinian citizens are one of the most marginalized social groups in of Israel. It is therefore not surprising that a vast proportion of the sociological literature pertaining to this group focuses on mechanisms of oppression and/or alternative forms of political resistance. While undeniably important, this narrow focus has been blind to one of the most fundamental changes in Arab-Palestinian society: the steady emergence of an Arab-Palestinian middle class. The paper addresses this blind spot in the research literature. We present the previously untold story of this structural change by describing the historical processes and socio-political mechanisms that have led to this development. We focus on specific periods of time and show that in each period, the Arab middle class developed primarily by seizing opportunities paradoxically created by policies that were meant to marginalize Arab-Palestinians, identifying prospects unlocked by the free market, and pursuing higher education. We then present descriptive results indicating the rise of the Arab middle-class in the last three decades. In contrast to the pessimistic and often deterministic view of the conditions of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, this article, which required the authors to free themselves of the limits imposed by critical sociology, paints a picture of agency and change. Theoretical and political implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores contributions to public good(s) in higher education in Ontario, Canada. In a break from the trend of this special issue, this paper does not offer a comprehensive national study. Rather, it is based on a multiple case study conducted in a single predominantly English-speaking province, Ontario, drawing on 19 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with policymakers and university staff, including those in academic and executive roles. The analysis offers novel insights into contemporary understandings of public good(s) in general, and Ontarian higher education’s contributions to the public good, and its relationship with the state and global community. Participants highlighted three dimensions of the public good: economic, knowledge-based, and social. While participants from the provincial and national spheres focused more on narratives of province- or nation-building through economic development and social mobility, university staff additionally highlighted knowledge-based contributions, emphasizing an educated citizenry, critical debate, and curiosity-driven research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the evolution of income affluence (richness) in Poland during 1998-2007. Using household survey data, the paper estimates several statistical indices of income affluence including income share of the top percentiles, population share of individuals receiving incomes higher than the richness line, and measures that take into account both the extent and the intensity of affluence. Results show that over the period under study there was a statistically significant and socio-economically sizable rise in income affluence by between 9 and 50%, depending on the index used. The overall income distribution in the period has shifted in favour of the rich as relative poverty and relative size and income share of the middle class have declined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational social mobility has been of interest to economists and sociologists in recent years. However, with the development of methodologies and applications, it has been found that studying income mobility and class mobility separately often led to some conflicting findings. The class mobility and income mobility of China, a major developing country, has attracted the widespread interest of economists and sociologists from around the world. In this article, we attempt to answer the following questions: Should these divergent findings of intergenerational income and class mobility be regarded as a result of the differing data problems faced by researchers seeking to investigate income and class mobility or as a result of their differing analytical approaches? Is there a significant difference between intergenerational class mobility and income mobility in China? Our own comparative analysis involves measuring the magnitudes and temporal trends of intergenerational class mobility and income mobility. By using China Health and Nutrition Survey data, this paper explicitly tests the differences in the intergenerational associations of the income table and the class table from the "local", "global", and "comprehensive" perspectives, and provides smooth estimates of trends of both social class mobility and income mobility. This empirical study demonstrates that there is strong evidence showing that China's class mobility and income mobility are not consistent in both fluidity levels and trend changes using the same data and same analytical approaches. Furthermore, there is a stronger association between fathers' class and children's class than between fathers' income and children's income, and the temporal trend of class mobility is more volatile than that of income mobility. This leads us to suggest that, in China, class may in general be a better indicator of socioeconomic status than one-shot measures of current income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobility has become a central topic of contemporary social research with the mobility turn initiated in the 2000s. In order to grasp the complexity of the global order, its authors have attempted to decenter the importance of human subjectivity and to envisage a "sociology beyond societies". The present paper considers this interpretive context to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Alfred Schutz's theory of action, and to propose a notion of mobility intrinsically linked to the performance of subjectivity. By revisiting the distinction between action as a thing produced and as an ongoing process, the notion of mobility is detailed in relation to movement in space and to the subjective flow of time. The specific type of action Schutz calls "locomotion" in his later work enables us to understand how action involves bodily operations in configuring a common space of sociality and communication. I conclude by going beyond the explanation of action in terms of its starting point and end point, and by assessing how action unfolds through the experiential life of the subject, with its new meanings and unexpected changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the special issue and explains the diversity as well as common features of mobilization practices present in cities around the world. The paper starts with presenting the specificity and history of urban movements worldwide, as well as the development of ‘right to the city’ frame. Drawing on the existing literature, it focuses on presenting different forms of urban activism and interpretations of ‘right to the city’ slogan. This paper strives to fuse the framework of social movements as networks (Diani, in: Diani, McAdam (eds) Social movements and networks, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 299-318, 2003) of challengers (Gamson in The strategy of social protest, Wadsworth Publishing, Belmont, 1990) with the concepts of diffusion and translation of ideas, borrowed from Finnemore and Sikkink (Int Org 52(4):887-917, 1998). It also illustrates the application of the theoretical concepts of incumbents and challengers (Gamson 1990), organizational platform and norm life cycle (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) as well as the development on movement networks within and between localities (Diani in The cement of civil society: studying networks in localities, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015). The theoretical model helps to explain the rapid global spread of the notion of the ‘right to the city.’ The paper concludes with a discussion of the urban context, both ‘glocal’ and global, as an arena of social mobilization around different aspects of the ‘right to the city.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the disconnect between, on the one hand, the neoliberal aspirations to make Lagos a model megacity for the twenty-first century and, on the other hand, the precarious temporality of the present in which many informal workers weave their routine existence. In particular, the paper examines the corrupt and violent manner in which the Lagos State Road Traffic Law of 2012 has been adapted by the government to restrict the space and mobility of informal workers as a function of making Lagos a 'world class' megacity and 'Africa's big apple.' Focusing on commercial motorbike-taxi (okada) riders and their association, the analysis extends to how one group of informal workers in Lagos are responding to neoliberal urban planning that impinge on their opportunities in, and rights to, the city. In this way, the paper illuminates our rather tenuous understanding of how informal workers exercise agency as they attempt to intervene in the unequal processes of urban renewal projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary during the period 1949 to 2017, using surnames to measure social status. In those years, there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989), which was a communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. The second is the modern liberal democracy (1989–2017), which is a free-market economy. We find five surprising things. First, social mobility rates were low for both upper- and lower-class families during 1949–2017, with an underlying intergenerational status correlation of 0.6–0.8. Second, social mobility rates under communism were the same as in the subsequent capitalist regime. Third, the Romani minority throughout both periods showed even lower social mobility rates. Fourth, the descendants of the eighteenth-century noble class in Hungary were still significantly privileged in 1949 and later. And fifth, although social mobility rates did not change measurably during the transition, the composition of the political elite changed rapidly and sharply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the promises made in education policy regarding people's future education, employment and social mobility. Specifically, the paper analyses how the term 'potential' functions in education policy texts and discourses to make tacit promises at an affective level. Contemporary education policies often invoke the need to realise personal and national economic potential, and speak of the risk of 'wasted potential', when justifying reform agendas directed at both increasing human capital investment and reducing educational inequity. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper develops a philosophical concept of potential that provides a theoretical framework for the analysis. The aim of the paper is to analyse how the term 'potential' functions in policy to: (a) couple economic and equity purposes for education; and (b) imply a relationship between talent, opportunity and aspiration, and particular a distribution of responsibility between governments and citizens for 'realising potential'. While primarily theoretical, the paper is informed by analyses of interview data and documents in two research projects: (1) a small pilot study of higher education equity policy in England and Australia since the mid-1990s and (2) a study of the expansion of human capital theory and large-scale educational assessments to include non-cognitive skills. The paper diagnoses the potential of 'potential' as a key word in policy and raises questions about the risks of becoming invested in the promises of education to 'realise potential'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meritocracy is gaining momentum in public discourse, being close to the determinants of people's demand of social justice (equality of opportunity, social mobility). Conversely, in Academia meritocracy is the object of harsh critiques. The meritocratic rhetoric brings people to overlook the factors which contributed to their success (unequal starting conditions, luck) over their individual actions, legitimating socioeconomic inequalities. Recently, it has been argued that market-driven societies foster the problems related to meritocracy. The concept of merit, conceived as the value of the individual contribution to the common good of society, is absorbed by market value. While we share the concerns on meritocracy, we question the idea that those are necessarily connected to the market sphere. To prove that, our paper digs in the theological roots of the concept of merit to better understand meritocracy. We inquire Pelagius–Augustine debate on human merit and salvation, and its influence on Rawls's critique of meritocracy. We base on the "Augustinian" Rawls our argument that market is not a meritocratic domain, but that in market there is space for merit conceived as 'legitimate expectations.' Our aim is to prove that merit can find some space in market societies without incurring in the problems of meritocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How will ocean governance actors and institutions handle a future where the abundance and spatial distribution of marine life changes rapidly and variably? The answer, this paper argues, will be influenced by inherited and changing ocean proximity politics, whereby institutions and actors use spatial proximity or adjacency to legitimize particular forms of resource control, conservation and use. Focusing on United Nations and Canadian institutional contexts and recognizing state and non-state actors as agents of policy change, the paper documents and examines why and how spatial proximity has been invoked (i) as a principle for claiming, defining and implementing use rights, privileges and responsibilities for not just nation-states but also for other entities such as coastal communities and small-scale fisheries; (ii) to justify and legitimize rights, privileges and responsibilities for their interest and benefit; and (iii) to inform and challenge global and local discussions about principles such as conservation, sustainability and distributive equity. The future practical use of spatial closeness/distance for guiding policies of access and exclusion under conditions of change will likely be influenced by challenges associated with applying multiple and conflicting governance principles, accommodating diverse interests and interpretations of principle definition and application, and multiple forms of biophysical and social mobilities. The conclusion highlights four areas of further research and policy engagement for the study of ocean proximity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from late adolescence to early adulthood represents a key moment in trajectories of social reproduction and mobility. A central mechanism influencing these trajectories is the cultivation of specific versions of selfhood. Research shows that socialization within various class locations shapes individuals' sense of self in ways that impact how they imagine the future and the actions they take in pursuit of goals. Thus far, however, existing literature has neglected to consider the experiences of youth from immigrant families, a population that encounters unique challenges in the transition to adulthood. This paper relies on 40 in-depth interviews to explore the self-narratives of second-generation immigrant (SGI) youth. We seek to understand how these narratives relate to their future orientations and approaches to planning. Additionally, given the findings of prior research, we consider variation in SGI youths' self-narratives by social class background. Respondents from middle-class families displayed a durable sense of agency, crafting either a focused self with a clear trajectory toward a white-collar occupation or an exploratory self, open to unbounded personal discovery. By contrast, most respondents from working-class backgrounds exhibited a more tentative sense of agency and narrated a vigilant self that was proactive but cautious in the face of uncertainty. Divergence in participants' self-narratives related to different strategies for planning for the future. Our findings extend the literature on the construction of agentic selfhood for college-going youth in the transition to adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early stages of a pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that encourage physical distancing and reduce contact can decrease and delay disease transmission. Although NPIs have been implemented globally during the COVID-19 pandemic, their intensity and timing have varied widely. This paper analyzed the country-level determinants and effects of NPIs during the early stages of the pandemic (January 1st to April 29th, 2020). We examined countries that had implemented NPIs within 30 or 45 days since first case detection, as well as countries in which 30 or 45 days had passed since first case detection. The health and socioeconomic factors associated with delay in implementation of three NPIs—national school closure, national lockdown, and global travel ban—were analyzed using fractional logit and probit models, and beta regression models. The probability of implementation of national school closure, national lockdown, and strict national lockdown by a country was analyzed using a probit model. The effects of these three interventions on mobility changes were analyzed with propensity score matching methods using Google's social mobility reports. Countries with larger populations and better health preparedness measures had greater delays in implementation. Countries with greater population density, higher income, more democratic political systems, and later arrival of first cases were more likely to implement NPIs within 30 or 45 days of first case detection. Implementation of lockdowns significantly reduced physical mobility. Mobility was further reduced when lockdowns were enforced with curfews or fines, or when they were more strictly defined. National school closures did not significantly change mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the moment e-shopping emerged, there have been speculations about its impact on personal mobility. A fair amount of research has already been carried out on Internet shopping itself as well as on its consequences for mobility. Most studies focus on the overall impact of online shopping on personal mobility. However, little is known about how personal shopping mobility can be characterised when differentiating its constituent stages, being browsing/orienting, comparing, selecting and purchasing products, and how this is affected by e-shopping. This will be the main topic of this paper. We will investigate this using recently collected data from the Netherlands Mobility Panel [in Dutch: MobiliteitsPanel Nederland (MPN)]. It is the unique combination of reported shopping trips in the three-day travel diary, the large amount of personal and household characteristics combined with the detailed information from the e-shopping questionnaire that enables us to perform this research. Using factor analysis, we explore the underlying factors related to the browsing and selection behaviour prior to the purchase of a product. Using these factors as a starting point, we apply cluster analysis resulting in three homogeneous groups of shoppers with different pre-purchase shopping behaviour. The groups differ clearly with respect to personal and household characteristics, in the frequency with which they buy and sell products online and in their perception of (dis-)advantages of online shopping. Once relevant groups have been distinguished and characterised, differences in shopping-related mobility between them are studied in two different ways. Firstly, we analyse statements from shoppers on how their shopping-related mobility has changed. Secondly, we analyse shopping trips reported in the three-day travel diary. Only one group, which consists of shoppers that rely on the Internet to search for product information, compare prices and get new product ideas, states that their shopping-related travel behaviour has changed since they started shopping online. Approximately 50% of all shoppers experienced no difference in their shopping mobility. The analysis of actual shopping mobility using the travel diary data showed only minor differences in shopping-related travel behaviour between the identified groups. Finally, we fit a multi-variate linear regression model of shopping trip distance to determine if (e)-shopping characteristics influence trip distances. The frequency with which people shop online as well as some stated changes in shopping-related travel behaviour (shopping in a similar manner and shopping longer) turn out to influence non-grocery shopping trip distance. No significant influence could be found of shopping cluster membership on shopping trip distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mobility patterns reflect many aspects of life, from the global spread of infectious diseases to urban planning and daily commute patterns. In recent years, the prevalence of positioning methods and technologies, such as the global positioning system, cellular radio tower geo-positioning, and WiFi positioning systems, has driven efforts to collect human mobility data and to mine patterns of interest within these data in order to promote the development of location-based services and applications. The efforts to mine significant patterns within large-scale, high-dimensional mobility data have solicited use of advanced analysis techniques, usually based on machine learning methods, and therefore, in this paper, we survey and assess different approaches and models that analyze and learn human mobility patterns using mainly machine learning methods. We categorize these approaches and models in a taxonomy based on their positioning characteristics, the scale of analysis, the properties of the modeling approach, and the class of applications they can serve. We find that these applications can be categorized into three classes: user modeling, place modeling, and trajectory modeling, each class with its characteristics. Finally, we analyze the short-term trends and future challenges of human mobility analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of 5G technology, mobile smart devices have become ubiquitous in daily life. The opportunistic social network composed of these mobile smart devices is a manifestation of the current network technology being upgraded to a new level. How to better perceive the spatiotemporal movement stated information about opportunistic social network nodes and establishing a suitable information prediction model is the key for the current research of opportunistic social networks. In the social network environment where widely distributed terminal carriers are members of the society, the network has the characteristics of sparsely distributed nodes, fast movement, and highly dynamic typologies, etc. Data transmission of nodes will cause great energy and overhead during the transmission. Aiming at this problem, this paper proposes an efficient path-sense message transmission strategy (EPST) based on Internet of Things systems in opportunistic social networks. It is a strategy proposed combining the social relationship and mobility characteristics of nodes. Furthermore, it proposes the problem of how to use the locally connected paths in opportunistic social networks. By studying the connectivity of network topology, it gives the identification method of stable locally connected subnets in the network and the method of effective path sensing. Simulation experiments show that this strategy can effectively improve the delivery ratio and greatly reduce network delay and overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses and synthesizes the consequences of the archaeogenetic revolution to our understanding of mobility and social change during the Neolithic period in Europe (6500–2000 BC). In spite of major obstacles to a productive integration of archaeological and anthropological knowledge with ancient DNA data, larger changes in the European gene pool are detected and taken as indications for large-scale migrations during two major periods: the Early Neolithic expansion into Europe (6500–4000 BC) and the third millennium BC "steppe migration." Rather than massive migration events, I argue that both major genetic turnovers are better understood in terms of small-scale mobility and human movement in systems of population circulation, social fission and fusion of communities, and translocal interaction, which together add up to a large-scale signal. At the same time, I argue that both upticks in mobility are initiated by the two most consequential social transformations that took place in Eurasia, namely the emergence of farming, animal husbandry, and sedentary village life during the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of systems of centralized political organization during the process of urbanization and early state formation in southwest Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous studies on social stratification and mobility in China, education is considered as the core mediatory factor in social reproduction and mobility. This paper, however, investigates how childhood health affects social stratification. Using data from Urbanization and Labor Migrant National Survey (2012), this study examines the effects of nutrition, hygiene, and health before age 14 on adult socioeconomic status attainment, including education, the international socioeconomic indexes of first job and current job, and family income per head. The structural equation model results show that the nutrition intake (whether one experienced starvation and the frequency of fish and meat intake) and hygiene (indicated by the source of drinking water and the toilet type) have significant effect on adult socioeconomic status attainment. However, the effects change at different life course stages. Moreover, childhood health (indicated by adult height) has significant impact on adult socioeconomic status attainment, but no significant impact on the international socioeconomic indexes of first job and current job. We conclude that investment in childhood health is an important mechanism affecting social class reproduction and mobility. Therefore, health intervention for children from poor and disadvantaged families are necessary. It will benefit children's education and encourage upward mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes adult children live with their parents? This paper examines the extent to which individual and family characteristics are associated with co-residence decisions between adult children and their parents. Using Mexico's 2011 Social Mobility Survey (EMOVI) retrospective data and focusing on the young adult population in Mexico, we test empirically what parent and adult children characteristics correlate with co-residence status. Marginal effects from a probit regression model show that, after controlling for individual characteristics and retrospective family conditions, adult children's education and employment status seem to be correlated with co-residence status, although only for males. Marital status, whether or not they have children, and retrospective parents' home ownership are all correlated with co-residence status. The probability of adult male children staying at their parents' home is reduced when the father has higher levels of education, while increased when the mother has higher levels of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the socio-economic status of parents and children is referred to by the literature as intergenerational social mobility. Low mobility implies that human capital, skills and talent can be misallocated. As a consequence, the workers’ efforts, their motivation and productivity could be negatively affected, causing adverse effects on economy growth and competitiveness. This paper attempts to study the evolution of intergenerational social mobility before and during the recent economic crisis in Spain. The methodology applied consists in analysing the movements along the occupational scale of children with respect to their parents. This involves associating the National Classification of Occupations with the New International Socio-economic Index of Occupational Status. Statistic and econometric methods are used to assess these occupational transitions and to analyse the covariates’ effects on them. Data used corresponds to the 2005 and 2011 Living Condition Survey (INE 2005, 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper joins a growing body of research linking measures of the physical environment to population well-being, with a focus on neighborhood toxins. Extending a national database on the social mobility of American children growing up in over 70,000 Census tracts, we explore the association between childhood exposure to two forms of pollutants and three socioeconomic outcomes for African Americans, whites, and Latinos. We find that children who grew up in Census tracts with higher levels of traffic-related air pollution and housing-derived lead risk experienced lower adult incomes on average relative to their parents and higher likelihoods of being incarcerated as an adult or having children as teenagers, after controlling for standard socio-demographic characteristics and metropolitan-level effects. The spatial distribution of these two pollutants is surprisingly different, however, with air pollution varying mostly between regions of the country while lead risk varies dramatically between neighborhoods within the same city. Yet, each pollutant predicts the three aspects of social mobility similarly, and we show important disparities in exposure by race. Differential exposure to environmental toxins in childhood may be a contributor to racial inequality in socioeconomic outcomes among adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ample evidence that internal migration is a vehicle for upwards economic and social mobility, particularly amongst young educated people, with studies documenting favourable effects on objective labour market outcomes such as employment status, earnings and occupational standing. However, this literature has been more silent about the potential effects of internal migration on subjective measures of utility. In this paper I use panel data from Australia and Britain and panel regression models to examine whether and how internal migration is associated with young people's self-reported job satisfaction, paying attention to the time dynamics underpinning the associations. This enables gaining a more holistic picture of the outcomes associated with internal migration during early adulthood. Key findings indicate that long-distance and work-motivated migrations have positive and statistically significant effects on the job satisfaction of young people in Britain and Australia, particularly amongst those who hold university degrees. Additionally, the results reveal time patterns in the ways in which job satisfaction and residential mobility intersect: long-term trends in job dissatisfaction can trigger internal migration, and internal migration can set long-term onwards trends in job satisfaction. I conclude by calling for further research on the outcomes of internal migration on subjective well-being leveraging the properties of panel data and using a life course approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysts of social mobility are coming round to the view that it is not enough to find a model that fits the data; it is at least as important to know which bits of the model fit the data, and which are unimportant. The need for this type of structuring becomes even more pressing when we seek to determine the dimensions along which societies differ. This paper carries the process of structuring a stage further by proposing an orthogonal decomposition of a mobility model in which each dimension (degree of freedom) can be given a distinct sociological interpretation. In the following paper orthogonal rotation is deployed to uncover the latent dimensions of a mobility table. Relations among different models are established. The paper doses with a response to criticisms published by Sobel (1983). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration and mobilities are vastly underestimated in India. In particular, circular migration remains poorly captured as circular migrants move back and forth between source and destination regions. Based on survey data from rural Bihar, an important source region of migration in India, this paper finds that a vast majority of migrants work and live in precarity in predominantly urban and prosperous destinations across India. However, those at the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder in source regions—the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, other backward classes I and the labouring class—are the worst off at destination; they are part of the most precarious shorter-term migration streams, earn the lowest incomes, have the poorest conditions of work, and live in the harshest circumstances. The paper shows that social and economic hierarchies, and in turn, precarity in source region is reproduced at destination, and, thus, there is little evidence that spatial mobility is associated with social mobility. Focusing on migrants' location, work, employment, income, housing, and access to basic services at destination, the paper foregrounds migrant precarity and adds to a small body of empirical literature that is significant in understanding the spatial and structural elements of circular migration in India and in turn, the migration crisis that emerged as a result of the economic shock of the COVID 19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores how the policy of alternative Chinese qualifications policy affects ethnic minorities' (EM) social mobility, and how such multi-exit assessment framework affects Chinese as a second language learning and teaching in Hong Kong. Chinese language (CL) qualifications other than the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) have been accepted by the University Grants Committee-funded institutions in Hong Kong as university admission requirements, including General Certificate of Secondary Education, International General Certificate of Secondary Education, and General Certificate of Education. These international qualifications are oftentimes considered lower-level non-equivalents to HKDSE in the job market. Even high achievers in these examinations are criticized by local employers as less-than-competent in workplace Chinese communication. Moreover, civil service jobs traditionally popular among EM require a Level 2 in HKDSE or specific government tests, which 'implied' the said alternative qualifications as insufficient for career advancement. CL teachers and EM students are thus torn between the manageable alternative qualifications to improve university admission chances, or the difficult HKDSE examination as well for better career opportunities, which reduce their chance of upward mobility. Through triangulation of interview data from an EM focus group ( N = 8, all female), relevant surveys, and government documents, the authors argue that EM students' academic advancement is highly related to their CL proficiency, and alternative qualifications do not necessarily suffice to improve their social mobility. The paper also looks into the policy's implicated challenges for curriculum planning and design faced by CL teachers, and recommend that policy reviews be carried out based on recent demographic shifts and classroom realities to better equip EM students' CL proficiency, so as to increase their employability, smoother social integration into Hong Kong society, and to resolve the intergenerational poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have considered the issues concerning dynamic changes in HDI and its various components from a relative standpoint. The analysis of HDI mobility should entail directional movement introduced by Fields (in Distribution and development: a new look at the developing world. MIT Press, Cambridge, ). However, Fields' analysis was in the space of absolute values. Here, we will try to extend this exercise to the positional mobility index by considering the question of improvement and deterioration in relative positions. This requires the concept of partial mobility where mobility is judged from the viewpoint of a particular group. We then try to introduce directional changes in partial mobility through axiomatic framework. Finally, we provide an illustrative example from the Indian data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the international mobility of academic researchers and social capital is complex. On the one hand, the literature suggests that social capital facilitates the international mobility of academics which, in turn, promotes the accumulation of international social capital, enhances research productivity, and advances careers. On the other hand, international mobility can isolate researchers from the national social capital in their origin countries. In this paper, I present the results of 42 interviews in Canada and Germany to examine how academics in both countries have experienced the connection between international mobility and social capital. In addition to revealing the complexity of this connection, the results show that social capital facilitates international mobility and that mobility sometimes creates social capital. However, mobility can also lead to the loss of national social capital that negatively affects early-career researchers in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]