Page 240 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

9781412934633-Chap-14 1/10/09 8:49 AM Page 211

LIFECOURSE OF THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PARADIGM 211

History Study (see, among others, Brückner representation of social contexts with a view
and Mayer, 2005), examining how they of individuals neither as simply acted upon
were hit by important historical events at by society, nor as free agents; social actors
various ages, with different consequences are influenced by institutions and life cir-
on their trajectories and life chances. cumstances, but they also make choices
Blossfeld led an ambitious project compar- among alternatives in a context of path
ing the effects of the globalization process dependency (Myles, 1998).
on the lifecourses of individuals in fourteen Traditional mobility tables assumed that a
countries, belonging to five different welfare few key milestones (parent’s position when
regimes (Blossfeld et al., 2005). He exam- ego was about 16 years old, and then ego’s
ined four groups: young people, males and first position and current position) provided
females in mid-career, and aging workers, in an adequate representation of the whole
order to see how, according to the institu- trajectory. This assumption has now become
tional context of their countries, their trajec- quite problematic. Current jobs do not
tories (educational, occupational, and adequately represent economic status in a
familial) were impacted by new economic context of high and increasing levels of job
uncertainties. instability. Social origin is increasingly diffi-
While these developments clearly represent cult to characterize because of changing
major shifts, and indeed increased sophistica- levels of homogamy/heterogamy, of family
tion, in the exploration of the influence of the disruptions, and of gender differences in life
social environment on social mobility, cycles. The complexity of transitions from
Treiman and Ganzeboom (2000) do not iden- school to work, and from there to retirement
tify them as providing a basis for the emer- also causes difficulties for the proper identifi-
gence of a new paradigm. In the same vein, cation of first and final jobs. All of these illus-
they deal in quite a technical way with one of trate non-linear features of increasingly
the key aspects of the relationship of individ- unstable social trajectories. They denote
uals to institutions, referring to it as the prob- anomalies in the traditional social mobility
lem of ‘selection bias’. What they refer to is paradigm.
the fact that individuals found in particular In their own review of the recent work of
social positions are not a representative cross- Research Committee 28, Hout and DiPrete
section of the overall population. They get an (2006) hint at the emergence of such a new
education to prepare for a specific profession, paradigm. They identify recent advances in
they only work if the wages offered are high five areas: (1) the impact of family structure
enough, and so on. In other words, individuals beyond the status variables that were the core
make decisions in situations of complexity of the Blau–Duncan model, (2) the impact of
and uncertainty; this, as we will see, is a basic neighbourhoods, (3) the impact of school
tenet of the lifecourse approach. systems, (4) the impact of labour markets,
We will argue that this portends the emer- and (5) the impact of the welfare state.
gence of a new paradigm in the field of social These areas are clearly more diversified
mobility. Attention is paid to new and than those cited in earlier periods; even
intriguing phenomena; this then leads to more importantly, they are seen as correspon-
innovative results, using new methods (in ding to rich patterns of institutional influ-
particular the new data provided by detailed ence. Families evolve as the trajectories
retrospective life histories or ambitious of their members change, and vice versa.
household panel surveys). The development Neighbourhoods affect the lives of individu-
of these genuinely longitudinal methods rep- als who live there, but they are also power-
resents a belated response to longstanding fully shaped by shifts in the composition of
critiques against transversal approaches to their populations. Schools do not only teach,
social mobility (Bertaux, 1973). This new they also select, track, certify in ways that vary
paradigm combines an increasingly rich from one place to another. Labour markets are