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Despite predominantly lower social class origins, the second generation of established immigrant groups in the UK are now attaining high levels of education. However, they continue to experience poorer labour market outcomes than the majority population. These worse outcomes are often attributed in part to their disadvantaged origins, which do not, by contrast, appear to constrain their educational success. This paper engages with this paradox. We discuss potential mechanisms for second‐generation educational success and how far we might expect these to be replicated in labour market outcomes. We substantiate our discussion with new empirical analysis. Drawing on a unique longitudinal study of England and Wales spanning 40 years and encompassing one per cent of the population, we present evidence on the educational and labour market outcomes of the second generation of four groups of immigrants and the white British majority, controlling for multiple measures of social origins. We demonstrate that second‐generation men and women's educational advantage is only partially reflected in the labour market. We reflect on the implications of our findings for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of the social composition of the UK scientific elite, as represented by Fellows of the Royal Society, in terms of Fellows' social class origins and type of secondary schooling. From various sources, we have assembled data for 1691 Fellows, representing 80% of our target population of all Fellows born from 1900 onwards whose scientific careers were spent predominantly in the UK. We find that while these elite scientists come largely from more advantaged class backgrounds, it is professional rather than business or managerial families that are the main source of their recruitment—and, increasingly, such families where a parent is in a STEM occupation. Recruitment from working‐class families has declined and for most recent birth cohorts almost ceased. The scientific elite is thus now more homogeneous as regards the social origins of its members than it was in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same time, little change is evident in the secondary schooling of Fellows. In all birth cohorts, between two‐fifths and a half of all—and over two‐thirds of those from more advantaged class backgrounds—were privately educated, although the proportion attending Clarendon schools would seem low compared with that in other elites. A further finding of interest is that some variation in Fellows' class origins and type of schooling exists across different research fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research on social mobility from the 1960s until now has made several facts clear. First, and most important, it is better to ask how the conditions and circumstances of early life constrain adult success than to ask who is moving up and who is not. The focus on origins keeps the substantive issues of opportunity and fairness in focus, while the mobility question leads to confusing side issues. Second, mobility is intrinsically symmetrical; each upward move is offset by a downward move in the absence of growth, expansion, or immigration. Third, social origins are not a single dimension of inequality that can be paired with the outcome of interest (without significant excluded variable bias); they are a comprehensive set of conditions describing the circumstances of youth. Fourth, the constraints of social origins vary by time, place, and subpopulation. These four “knowns” should inform any attempt to collect new data on mobility.

We aim to bring together two current strands of research into inequalities in individuals' educational attainment that are associated with their social origins: that concerned with the "primary" and "secondary" effects of social origins in creating inequalities, and that concerned with the relation between these inequalities and different components of social origins, taken to represent different forms of parental resources. Our main findings are the following. The secondary effects of social origins—their effects via the educational choices that young people make given their prior academic performance—are clearly operative across five key educational transitions within the English educational system. More specifically, we estimate that 35% of the total effect of social origins is secondary in the earliest transition that we consider, and from 15% to 20% in the subsequent four. Furthermore, mediation analyses reveal that secondary effects are most strongly associated with parental education and then, to a lesser degree with parental status, while little association exists with parental class and none at all with parental income. Primary effects are also at all transitions most strongly associated with parental education and status but in this case both parental class and parental income do retain some importance. We suggest an explanation for our empirical findings as resulting largely from the concern of highly educated, professional parents, and their children to avoid the occurrence of downward intergenerational mobility, especially in terms of education and status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wine is a social object, established in the Old World and later migrated to the New World. Champagne is an internationally important and famous French sparkling wine, significantly present worldwide. Brazil, a New-World wine producer, has a recent but expanding history of sparkling wine production and consumption. As to its social aspect, this product has different representations and roles in both these countries. Therefore, this study aims to understand how culture and social status influence the organization of social representations associated with sparkling wines in Brazil and France. Thus, we used the Social Representation approach, a theory of knowledge and communication. For content collection, we carried out a verbal association task. Two hundred and thirteen Brazilians and one hundred ninety-eight French participants provided the first four words which came to mind after hearing four inducted words. The verbal associations were categorized using semantic contextualization. Then, we performed a Correspondence Factor Analysis. The results supported our hypothesis that culture, social status, and social origins all influence social representations associated with sparkling wine, revealing this kind of wine to be a product of social distinction and affluence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to probe the degree of correlation between social origins and achievement in higher education and analyze patterns of intergenerational educational mobility in Argentina. The author uses data from a 2010 survey about stratification and social mobility in the country. The research limits itself to Argentina nationwide in the year 2010. The estimates of logistical regression models for the three age groups suggest a moderate reduction in unequal educational opportunities over time. The analysis of educational mobility through log-linear models shows that the greatest reproduction can be seen at the top and at the base of the educational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the impact of social background on the probability of over-education in a cohort of Spanish university graduates born in the 1970's and graduating in 1999/2000, based on the 2005 Reflex survey. The influence of three resources associated to social origins (cultural, social and economic capital) is evaluated in order to challenge one of the pillars of the modernization theory: the merit-based selection. Our results reveal that, even when controlling for field of study, occupational experience and average grade, both cultural and social capital exert an effect on the risk of over-education in Spain, but economic capital does not. Moreover, we conclude that the direct effect of social origins on over-education is not significantly mediated by a field of study choice dependent on social origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Methods for analyzing objective social mobility and social mobility as perceived by individuals are reviewed in connection with two studies of these types of mobility based on two surveys: the “Trois Générations” survey conducted by the Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Vieillesse (CNAV), France's state pension office, and INSEE's Formation-Qualification Professionnelle survey (FQP) (Institut National de Statistique et des Études Économiques). Subjective mobility is formalized quite differently in the two surveys, but so is objective mobility, which was formalized using specific procedures to make it comparable with respondents’ subjective assessments. The present research note proposes a method for comparing the two sorts of mobility using standard mobility tables. When tables crossing three variables (social origins, social destinations, and average subjective mobility score) are used, the spontaneous sociology that collectively emerges from individual responses turns out to be not very different from scholarly sociology of social categories. After showing that subjective mobility varies coherently with objective mobility, an additional hypothesis is put forward to account for some of the observed discrepancies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of Sociologie du Travail is the property of Association pour le Developpement de la Sociologie du Travail and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)