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The main objective of this article is to identify the hegemonic perspective on social mobility studies, the political assumptions of this, and present an alternative. This alternative would allow us to use the social mobility concept but regarding the study of the social class structuring processes. Particularly, we try to show how both alternatives have different explanations for social inequality on Latin American societies. A synthesis of the functionalist vision is presented, in association with the interpretative and political inferences that emerge from it. Then, an alternative proposal that allows us to consider social mobility in the field of class structuring processes, in which social policies have a key role by promoting different gradients of income distribution, with regressive or redistributed effects on class inequality. Class paths appear as the concept that joins these processes within a relational view of social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]