Mobility means movement. The term social mobility refers to any movement of individuals, families or groups between different sectors of society. The sociological meaning of the term social mobility is the movement of individuals or groups within different levels of social stratification. According to P. A. Sorokin social mobility is the shift of position may be undertaken by an individual or social object or value across the social structure. Any shift of position in society experienced by an individual or a group has its impact not only on the individual or group, but also on the whole society. So the concept of social mobility is very crucial in sociology to understand these changes and the hierarchical structure that operates in society.
Dimensions And Implications of Mobility Following are the several dimensions to understand social mobility.
1. Pace of Mobility: On the basis of pace of mobility, there are two ways of studying social mobility. When the pace of mobility is rapid, mobility of an individual within his own adult lifetime is possible and that is called intra generational mobility. When the pace of mobility is slow and gradual, it takes more time and spreads over generations. It includes at least two generations. Mobility across the generations is called inter- generation mobility. It popularly known as ‘career mobility’.
Peter Blau and Duncan in their study of American occupational structure found different factors influencing a person’s change of moving upward. They are amount of education, the nature of persons first job and father’s occupation .
2. Range of Mobility: The social distance covered by the individual in his mobility is denoted by the term ‘range’ so the mobility can be short-ranged shift or long range mobility. Frank Parkin stressed on the instances of long range’ mobility. But Duncan and Blau concluded that long range mobility is rare.
3. Possibilities of Mobility: Possibilities of mobility largely depends on the type of society. A society may be open or closed. Mobility is not possible if a society is closed and rigid .Very little vertical mobility is possible there. Caste based society in India is an example of closed society. But it is not closed in strict sense .
Pre-modern Colombia and India more or less approximate such type. Mobility is facilitated if a society is flexible and open. Modern Industrial societies are the open society. Here vertical mobility is possible, though few barrier does exist. Industrialization is followed by urbanization. It contributes to vertical social mobility because achievement criteria becomes more important in determining status of individual.
Government also intervenes in the stratification system in industrial societies as welfare nation by taking welfare measures for the upliftment of poor and down trodden.
4. Comparative social mobility: P.A.Sorokin claimed through his empirical finding that the change to be mobile is greater in the United States than in any European society. Seymour Lipset and Reinhard Bendix studied the industrial societies of European continent and divided the occupational structure into manual and normal and showed that there is little difference from one industrial country to another . Gerhard Lenski oberserved that the mobility rate is fairly similar in individual societies. On the basis of his finding US shows highest mobility rate(34%) followed by Sweden (32%) , Great Britain (31%), Denmark (30%) , Norway (30%) and France (29%).
Frank Parkin studied that communist countries of eastern Europe, and found that dominant class people are able to transmit competitive advantage to their own children like the capitalist countries. Privileged class are in a position to preserve higher position for their children. But there is little chance for the social mobility of peasants and manual worker.
The pace of mobility accelerated with industrialization. Today we have arrived at advanced industrial societies. It is dominated by service sector. This increased the white-collar and middle class occupation. This development accounted for social mobility along with individual effort. But many scholar argued that capitalist path of industrialization has resulted in widespread downward mobility. Marxist scholars showed that there is continuous and systematic degradation in labourers’ social position in industrial society. Thus the cosequence has been large-scale downward mobility.
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