SOCIAL MOBILITY

Hartmut Kaelble

A standard theme of social history, social mobility was one of the topics that inspired modern social history's beginnings in the 1960s and the 1970s in Europe and the United States. Historians approached the topic for various reasons. One of their central motivations was to determine the equality of social opportunities in certain periods and contexts—that is, whether modern industrial or service societies helped or hindered chances of upward mobility for men as well as for women. In an era when the industrial and then the tertiary societies were becoming predominant in the United States and Europe, and historians turned to certain central topics, including increasing openness or reinforced exclusiveness of modern elites; the rising or declining chances of social ascent for descendants from the lower classes or from immigrants or ethnic groups; and the broadening or reduced access to channels of social ascent such as education, business enterprises, public bureaucracies, family networks, politics, sports, and entertainment. Moreover, social mobility was frequently discussed by historians in a comparative perspective. European and American historians explored both the myth of the unique chances for social ascent in America and the myth of unrestricted social mobility in communist countries. They also started to investigate societies outside the Western world.

DEFINITIONS AND METHODS

What do historians mean by social mobility? For the most part their investigations center on the social mobility of individuals rather than the grading up or down of entire social groups or classes. Thus the heading of social mobility does not cover the decline of the European aristocracy or of the urban artisanal elite; the ascent of the middle class, or of various professions, or of ethnic groups and groups of immigrants; or the decline or ascent of women. Although the study of social mobility takes these changes in social hierarchies into account, they are usually not its main theme.

Moreover, the study of social mobility does not focus on the geographical mobility of individuals, as the term might suggest, but rather on mobility within social structures and hierarchies. To be sure, a good many studies of social mobility do treat immigration and geographical mobility as a factor in social mobility; local studies especially treat the mobile as a group of historical individuals who are difficult to trace, hence creating severe methodological difficulties. The theme of transience has been particularly important in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States and European history. Wider studies of immigration have also tested causes (in terms of threatened downward mobility) and results (in terms of comparing mobility results for different immigrant groups) where geographic migration was involved.

Another defining feature of the study of social mobility is its concentration on occupational mobility. In investigations of intragenerational mobility, historians trace the mobility of individuals among different occupational positions or their persistence in the same occupation throughout their lives. In investigations of intergenerational mobility, historians compare the occupations of an individual with that of his or her father, mother, and ancestors at specific points in their lives. Occupation is usually seen as the crucial indicator of the situation of an individual in a historical society. To be sure, historians are fully aware of the limitations of this concept of occupational mobility. They are highly sensitive to the fact that the occupational activity of an individual in history, more often than today, might comprise a simultaneous plurality of occupations or include professions that are still in the making and thus without a clear position in the society of that time. In addition, a change in education, religious affiliation, or social networks might be as important as the change in occupation. Finally, historians are fully aware that, the farther back into history a study goes, the less reliable and distinct does occupation as an indicator of the social position of an individual become.

With occupation as the key indicator of social hierarchies, social mobility studies seek a highly differentiated body of knowledge about societies in the past. They explore variations in income, properties, educational training, prestige, and social networks among occupations by means of linking various historical sources; individuals can be traced through marriage license files, tax files, census materials, last wills, records of churches and public administrations, and autobiographical sources. The competence of historians in linking various sources has shown a marked improvement.

The study of social mobility has been criticized for various methodological reasons. Many historians argue that the sources normally used provide only a crude idea of the historical reality; they consider data on only two or three points of time in a whole life and on only one occupation insufficient and unsatisfying. In addition, by focusing on occupations the study of social mobility excludes large parts of the population. This is especially true for women, whose historical mobility until the first half of the twentieth century mainly involved marriage rather than occupational activity. It is also true in a more fundamental way for societies in which large parts of the population did not yet have distinct and single professions. This type of mobility study therefore has less to say about peasant societies or early modern urban societies than about modern industrial societies. Moreover, critics object that the quantitative study of social mobility concentrated too heavily on quantifiable aspects of objective circumstances and neglected entirely the subjective dimension of experiences, motivations, and mentalities. Defining status is a cultural matter, and occupations change in status over time. This variability requires sensitivity in mobility assessments.

These criticisms spurred some new trends in the methods of historical research on social mobility, with the result that the study of social mobility has achieved a higher level of sophistication. Individual careers are explored in micro studies of as many details as possible, with attention to autobiographical materials that often cannot be analyzed quantitatively. Studies of a few individual cases in which source materials are rich are given priority over quantitative studies of all members of a local society. This type of micro study is rarely limited to social mobility but covers a large variety of social aspects. In addition, studies of social mobility in which occupation is not predominant are becoming more important. Thus the study of the social mobility of women has begun, though only very few studies on gender differentials exist. It has become clear that the results are highly interesting, showing that the history of the social mobility of women is clearly different from that of men. Some studies also try to include subjective matters and trace the impact of mentalities and experiences on social mobility. Furthermore, the number of international and interregional comparative studies of the history of social mobility has increased somewhat, using the rich results of about thirty years of historical research in this field.

INTERDISCIPLINARY COOPERATION

Social mobility is one of the major fields of social history in which research comes not only from historians but also from scholars of other disciplines. This is especially true for three crucial aspects of the history of social mobility: Political scientists have sponsored important investigations using the historical perspective in exploring the recruitment of the elites, particularly the political and administrative elites. Educationists and sociologists have participated in the historical research on educational opportunities in schools and in higher education. The most important contribution comes from sociologists in the investigation of the overall trends of social mobility during the twentieth century.

In the early years of the social mobility field, historians were strongly encouraged by the work of major historical sociologists such as Pitirim Sorokin, Seymour M. Lipset, Reinhart Bendix, and D. V. Glass, who had published studies of the history of social mobility. In this interdisciplinary cooperation, quantification became an important bridge between historians and sociologists. Later, a sort of division of labor emerged between the two fields. Sociologists usually explore social mobility on the level of entire countries by means of cohort analysis, which is based on actual surveys and traces differences between older and younger age cohorts, assuming that these differences represent historical changes in social mobility. They sometimes use separate, often more detailed surveys for different age groups and compare their life stories, going on to write international comparisons of historical trends of social mobility. Sociologists also developed highly sophisticated statistical indicators for measuring trends and international differences. By contrast, historians usually explore social mobility on the local or regional level, using the variety of sources discussed above. Some historians claim to be able to study social mobility for entire regions or even countries from the early modern period onward on the basis of these sources. In selecting different types of cities and villages and in comparing local studies on a transregional and transnational level, historians also can investigate general tendencies of social mobility. Historians mostly use simpler quantitative methods of analysis that are less difficult to understand than the indicators used by sociologists. As the links between these two disciplines are disappointingly weak, the reader is obliged to consult the sociological as well as the historical literature.

MAIN QUESTIONS

Four major questions have especially attracted the attention of historians of social mobility: Did industrialization and modernization produce an increase, decrease, or no change in social mobility? Did social mobility advance in the United States and in communist societies, especially as compared to Western European societies? How were opportunities for social mobility different for each gender? What was the discourse of contemporaries on social mobility?

Social mobility in modern society. The increase in social mobility in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries means different things to different authors in the field. Greater mobility, in the context of industrialization and modernization, can signify a more meritocratic recruitment, especially for the few most prestigious, most powerful, and best-paid positions. That mobility may occur between occupations; it may be upward as well as downward; it may apply to job mobility within the same social class. Increased social mobility may encompass the chances of both genders and of minorities. Sometimes it refers specifically to a clear increase in the opportunities of the lower classes as compared to the opportunities of the upper and middle classes, rather than greater mobility across the board.

The advocates of the view that social mobility has undergone a general increase often point specifically to the rising number of upwardly mobile persons since industrialization. They argue that various major social changes led to greater social mobility and social ascent. The general decline of the fertility rate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made it possible for parents not only to invest more in the individual help and education of their children but also to promote their own professional careers. The rapid expansion of secondary and higher education, especially since the end of the nineteenth century, enlarged enormously the chances for better training. The rapid increase of geographic mobility since the second half of the nineteenth century led to a widening of the labor market and to a greater variety of new chances. Among the active population, the fundamental shift from the predominance of agrarian work up to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the predominance of service work, especially since the 1970s, generated substantial social mobility between occupations. The distinct increase in the sheer number of occupations in all modern societies since the industrial revolution also must have led to more social mobility. The general change in mentalities; the weakening of the emotional identification with specific professions, social milieus, and local milieus; and the rising readiness for job mobility and for lifelong training further enlarged the number of socially mobile persons. The rise of the welfare state, the mitigation of individual life crises, and the guarantee of individual social security clearly improved the chances for further training and for the purposeful use of occupational chances. Government policies aimed at enhancing educational and occupational opportunities for lower classes, for women, for ethnic and religious minorities, and for immigrants also have had an impact on social mobility. The list of factors attesting to an increase in social mobility in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is substantial.

Yet there are those who see social mobility as having remained stable or even declined. They are a heterogeneous group, with arguments stemming from very different ideas of social developments. It is sometimes argued that nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrialization led not only to a rising number and a fundamental change of occupations but also to a class society in which the major social classes—the middle class, the lower middle class, the working class, the peasants, and in some societies also the aristocracy—tended to reinforce the demarcation lines between classes and hence to reduce rather than enlarge the number of mobile persons. Other advocates of the skeptical view argue that the fundamental upheaval of modern societies during industrialization led to a unique volatility in social mobility, both upward and downward, and that modern societies thereafter became more closed: the generation of pioneers in business ended, most occupational careers became more formalized and more dependent on higher education, modern bureaucracies emerged, and mentalities adapted to the modern, highly regulated job markets.

Other scholars argue for the stability of social mobility rates in a different and much more narrow sense: they argue that long-term changes in social mobility from the industrial revolution until the present were mostly structural; that is, they depended almost exclusively on the redefinition of the active population rather than on the reduction of social, cultural, and political barriers. In this view social mobility remained stable if one excepts the changes simply induced by alternations in occupational structure; peasants, for example, became workers, which constituted a real change, but not necessarily a case of upward mobility. Still other scholars posit a stable inequality of educational and occupational chances for the lower classes, women, and minorities in comparison with those for the middle and upper class, the male population, or the ethnic majority.

Out of this long debate has grown, since the beginning of quantitative studies of social mobility after World War II, a large number of historical studies of social mobility. Their wide range of results can be distilled to three main points: First, only in very rare cases was a clear decline in social mobility rates found. Most studies show either stable or increasing rates of social mobility, depending upon the type of community and country and the generation and period under investigation. However, there is no overwhelming overall evidence for either the stability or increase of social mobility rates. Second, changes of overall social mobility rates do in fact depend to a large degree on changes in occupational and educational structure. Thus one can say that modern societies became more mobile to a large degree because education expanded so much and because occupational change became so frequent and normal. Finally, much evidence indicates that the increase of educational and social mobility of the lower classes and women did not impair the educational and occupational chances of the middle and upper classes and men. Except for the eastern European countries in some specific periods, social mobility was usually not a zero-sum game.

Social mobility in the United States and the communist bloc. The question of advanced social mobility in the United States dates at least from the early nineteenth century, when the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville argued that American society offered more chances for upward social mobility than did Europe. For a long time the subject was approached from a moral perspective, concerning the advantages and disadvantages of a mobile society. After World War II some social scientists attacked the notion that American society was in fact more mobile, the American sociologist Seymour M. Lipset being the most prominent. He argued that industrialization and social modernization everywhere led to the same basic increase in social mobility; overall international figures on rates of social mobility and of social ascent after World War II did not show any American superiority in those terms. Lipset's attack on what was a myth of long standing provoked a debate among academics and intellectuals. American influence in the world had reached its peak, and the model of the American way of life in general was undergoing intense debate both in America and in Europe. Skepticism about the American superiority in social mobility was voiced by Simone de Beauvoir, the French intellectual, who wrote in L'Amérique au jour le jour (1948) after travel in the United States that "there is almost no hope any more for the lower class to move up into this [upper] class." Other social scientists as well as writers defended the notion of advanced American social mobility. Ralf Dahrendorf, the German sociologist, argued in his book Die angewandte Aufklärung: Gesellschaft und Soziologie in Amerika that "much direct evidence exists that [the United States] offers the opportunity of social ascent also to those who would have been stopped in Europe by the rigid social hierarchies."

Evidence in three areas was put forward to prove that America was a leader in social mobility. Detailed empirical studies by sociologists demonstrated that lead in some crucial aspects, especially mobility in the professions. American higher education was more extensive and offered greater access to the professions than did the European counterpart. Hence the social ascent from the lower classes into the professions that are based on higher education was clearly more frequent than in Europe. In addition, comparative historical studies on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American and European cities showed that in a special sense a modest American lead existed during that period: unskilled workers in fact moved up into white-collar positions in American cities somewhat more frequently than in European cities. Finally, historians demonstrated that the important difference between American and European societies could be found in the idea of social mobility rather than in the actual rates of mobility. Americans continuously believed that their country offered more opportunities than the rigid European societies.

Studies in the late twentieth century tended to argue that American society no longer leads Europe in general social mobility. To be sure, international comparisons show that strong and persistent differences in social mobility between cities and countries existed and still exist. Hence it is difficult to accept the assertion of a worldwide convergence of social mobility through industrialization and modernization. However, probably because of the fundamental social changes in Europe since World War II, there is no clear evidence for a general American lead in social mobility against the whole of Europe.

Neither as provocative nor as persistent, nevertheless the subject of social opportunities in communist countries, especially in the USSR during the 1920s and 1930s and in the Eastern European nations in the late 1940s and 1950s, attracted its share of social mobility studies. During these periods rates of upward social mobility into the higher ranks of the social hierarchy were substantial compared to rates in Western European societies. This was true partly because higher education expanded rapidly; partly because the communist abolition of the business and landowning elites and the seizure of power by the Communist Party opened up top positions for social ascent in industry and agriculture, politics and administrations; and partly because employment structure changed rapidly during rapid industrialization. However, the rise of social opportunities in communist countries was, if it existed at all, largely limited to the period of the initial upheaval. Most comparative studies of the 1970s and 1980s show that rates of social mobility were not distinctly higher in the eastern part of Europe compared to the western part. This change occurred for several reasons: the communist political and administrative elite became exclusive and gentrified; in several communist countries the expansion of higher education slowed down, and hence the student ratio in Eastern Europe in general fell below the ratio in Western Europe; and social change slowed down.

Gender contrasts in social mobility. Except for a few studies, the history of gender contrasts in social mobility is largely unexplored. But gender contrasts undoubtedly will add important new aspects to the general debate about long-term trends in social mobility. The existing studies point to four conclusions. First, in a more radical sense than in the study of male mobility, female mobility raises the question of whether social mobility should in fact be centered around occupational mobility or whether other factors such as marriage and unpaid or partially paid work in emerging professions are to be taken into account much more than they have been so far. In the end, marriage might turn out to be an important channel of upward or downward mobility for men as well in past societies. Second, female mobility raises the question of greater downward mobility during the transition to modern society, when female activity outside the family sphere increased. A study of female social mobility in twentieth-century Berlin demonstrates that a large number of active women became intergenerationally déclassé during the early parts of the century. Further studies are required to corroborate the results. Third, the study of the social mobility of women demonstrates much more clearly than the study of the social mobility of men the effects of economic crises and fundamental transitions on social mobility. Opportunities for women seem to have depended strongly on economic prosperity, on long-term social stability. In periods of economic crisis and rapid transitions such as the upheaval of 1989–1991, women more than men belonged to the losers. Here again the study of female mobility might draw the attention of historians to a more general aspect of mobility that was not sufficiently investigated. Finally, the social mobility of women also demonstrates that definite changes in social opportunities can be achieved only in the long term. Even though important channels of upward social mobility such as education offered equal chances to women, this did not lead to a parallel improvement of occupational chances for women. It is highly doubtful that the explanation for this gap can be found simply in the study of institutions and context factors. Historical studies of the experience of social mobility and the perception of social mobility will become more important than they have been so far.

The discourse on social mobility. The historical study of social mobility has begun to be conducted in the light of another field of inquiry, the history of identities and the debate about modernity. Unlike the aspect of social opportunities, this aspect of the subject is relatively unexplored. One approach to it is by way of the history of European identity. In the decades before World War I, Europeans became aware of the rise of the superior American economy and the more liberal American society. European self-understanding was no longer based on an implicit feeling of superiority over all other societies; rather, it was tinged with a growing uneasiness about modernity. Tocqueville was a very early example of this worried European self-understanding. More advanced social opportunities in America came to symbolize modernity and, therefore, relative European backwardness. Such opportunities were welcomed by the more liberal Europeans and described as a horrifying social scenario without any fixed hierarchies by the more conservative.

This debate gradually changed when Europe entered the period of a fundamental crisis of self-understanding between World War I and roughly the 1960s. The idea of open social opportunities gradually was shared by all Europeans. However, some Europeans still saw Europe as a backward society with lower social opportunities than the United States. Other Europeans argued that one of the last aspects of European superiority was the greater room for individuality allowed by European society compared to the conformity of American society. These Europeans, among them Simone de Beauvoir, thus saw Europe as the society with more opportunities for the individual. When the historical study of social mobility began, this initial debate was still going on. After the 1970s or so European self-understanding changed again, overcoming the period of fundamental identity crisis. Social ascent became less important as an element of European self-understanding and as a theme of the debate over modernity.

THE DECLINE OF THE TOPIC AND ITS FUTURE

During the 1980s and 1990s social mobility was much less frequently investigated by historians. The major trend of social history was directed to other themes, other fundamental questions, and other methods. A variety of factors contributed to this declining interest in social mobility.

First, the initial wave of studies of social mobility appeared to be repetitive, and the subject seemed to have lost its former innovative power. After the completion of the first twenty or thirty local studies of social mobility during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States and Europe, historians failed to develop a convincing strategy showing which type of community in which country and period promised to open new insights. Historians did not rush to investigate the seventh industrial or fourth port city in the sixth industrializing country. In addition, the more sophisticated the methods and the use of sources became, the more time-consuming and expensive the individual study of social mobility grew to be. This rising standard of the study of social mobility was only partially compensated by the technical progress of personal computers. One can say that the quality standard for social mobility studies by historians rose dramatically, while the chance to present additional new arguments declined. At the same time, the gap between the quantitative methods employed by historians and sociologists widened, and thus the study of social mobility by sociologists was less encouraging for historians. Moreover, some of the questions that inspired the historical study of social mobility—the more open American society, the effects of industrialization and modernization—were asked much less frequently. These questions lost their former urgency once it was widely accepted that social mobility rates were about the same in most societies and that an upward trend in social mobility in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in industrializing and modernizing countries could not be proved. Finally, the thematic trends in historical research made social mobility seem less modern a theme. The quantitative and social scientific profile of the historical study of social mobility made it less attractive among the mainstream thematic trends of historical research, which led toward a return to political history, toward a cultural history inspired by anthropological questions unconnected with social mobility, or toward a social history dealing primarily with discourses, mentalities, and microworlds.

To be sure, it would be misleading to say that historians abandoned social mobility as a theme. Quite the opposite, the study of discourses, mentalities, values, and microworlds often treated the social mobility of individuals and rendered it a normal topic of the historian. But the label of social mobility no longer appeared on the title pages of books, chapters, or articles.

The future of the study of social mobility is that of a normal theme among many others in history rather than a top theme in an expanding branch of history, as in the 1960s and 1970s. In this more modest but realistic sense, one can expect and hope for four sorts of studies on neglected aspects of social mobility. The first is the so far neglected study of social mobility beyond Western Europe and the United States, leading to international comparisons in a geographic dimension including Eastern European, Asian, African, and Latin American cases. The questions of social opportunities in advanced and developing societies and of the particularities of Europe will then be answered in a much more comprehensive way than they have been so far. Gender contrasts is the second aspect deserving of future study. Our knowledge of the social mobility of women, in contrast to that of men, is still very limited. The subject should be pursued through case studies of contrasting countries, various activities of women, and contrasting general conditions such as prosperity and economic depression, peace and war, stability and transitions. A third future theme involves specific factors of social mobility such as religion, types of family, immigration, unemployment and poverty, background in terms of social milieu, and social upheavals and transitions. Historians will probably explore these contexts of social mobility in case studies of a certain number of individuals rather than in quantitative studies of entire communities, thus attending to the subjective experience of social mobility. Finally, the history of social mobility debates, as delineated here, is itself deserving of further study.

See alsoThe Industrial Revolutions (volume 2);Gender and Work; History of the Family (volume 4);Schools and Schooling; Higher Education (volume 5); and other articles in this section.

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