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The Lifecourse of the Social

Mobility Paradigm

Stéphane Moulin and Paul Bernard

INTRODUCTION with the offering of some enticing empirical
findings. A paradigm transforms a group of
How are advantageous and disadvantageous persons who share the same collection of
socio-economic positions transmitted across beliefs and agreements into a discipline or, at
generations, and how are they reproduced or least, a disciplinary field. After a period of
altered over the lifecourse trajectories of scientific inquiry and competition among
individuals? This question has engaged soci- pre-paradigmatic currents, a period of
ologists in what has come to be identified as normal science follows, characterized by the
the field of social mobility. It was launched creation of specialized journals and a claim
when Pitirim Sorokin published, in 1927, to a special place in academe. One of the
Social and Cultural Mobility. Since this first main features of a paradigm is thus its grad-
attempt at providing a systematic theory, a ual evolution into normal science, until the
social mobility paradigm has developed, and advent of the next paradigmatic revolution,
it has also been challenged. based on the identification of a new set of
Our intent is not to systematically review anomalies which lead to revisions of meth-
the vast literature in this field, a task that has ods, and of empirical findings. We will argue
been achieved very competently in a number here that a new paradigm may be emerging in
of places (see below). We rather want to draw the field of social mobility, inspired by the
attention to some key conceptual assump- lifecourse perspective.
tions made by most analysts of social stratifi- It is useful to broach the question of the
cation and social mobility. definition of social mobility from this very
According to Kuhn (1970), paradigms perspective. We have defined it in a fairly
spring from the recognition of anomalies in broad sense at the outset: it refers to the
previous scientific explanations. Paradigms degree and mode of transmission of social
propose a new set of methods to search privilege (and underprivilege) over the life of
for new answers to reformulated questions. individuals, and from one generation to the
The usefulness of a paradigm is established next. But what paradigms do is, precisely, to