Social Mobility for the 21st Century by Steph Lawler Geoff Payne

Author:Steph Lawler, Geoff Payne [Steph Lawler, Geoff Payne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367253479
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

The example of Ian McEwan was used earlier in this piece because it was very typical of the experience of intellectually able working-class young people in the 1950s and 1960s. Early university expansion, the loss of lives in the war, and the changing nature of the occupational structure during these decades opened up slots in middle-class employment which people from working-class backgrounds were recruited to fill, especially young men. This period was marked by a good degree of structural mobility.

Narratives of our students suggest that individual upward mobility is still possible for working-class students, such as Harvey, especially if they chose a degree or a postgraduate course which open access to professional work, from law to school-teaching. However, journalist Ian Jack, another beneficiary of the post-war middle-class expansion, suggests that what he calls ‘the escalator’ may be broken (Jack 2016). It is possible he is right. Our research suggests that the changing rules of the game continue to favour middle-class students. The capitals they inherit and acquire bolster them against individual downward mobility. Thus we have argued that currently higher education acts both to promote individual social mobility (for many individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds) and to maintain the current status quo (with the odds of middle-class graduates obtaining elite jobs being much greater: Bathmaker et al. 2016). Therefore, we argue that structural social mobility is stalling (see also Chapter 1). If real equality of opportunity is to be achieved, major social changes will be needed: fairer recruitment practices, outlawing of unpaid internships, more funding for postgraduate training, and control over the housing market. Without these changes, the upper-middle control of elite occupations is set to continue.

This is not to decry the positive impact of HE, even for those who struggle to achieve occupational success. As Zoe told us:

I think I had an overwhelming positive experience regardless, like building as a person, you know. Intellectually I’ve developed a lot. I’m a lot more analytical and I understand the world better.

The university experience brings maturity, increased confidence, and a broader and enhanced understanding of the world (Bathmaker et al. 2016, chapter 8). Economically, it means less likelihood of unemployment, more resources to bring to the labour market than those without qualifications, and a continued graduate premium over a lifetime’s earnings (although there has been recent speculation that this may start to wane with oversupply of graduates: Scott 2016).

But such findings highlight the limits of the neo-liberal meritocratic discourse of social mobility. Put simply, we cannot all be in the top 1 per cent and some people are needed to fill more basic social roles (for example, in cleaning, waste disposal, catering, retail, and assembly work) which cannot be performed by machines. It follows that the third alternative and socialist version of mobility, the upward hike of the lower tiers of society, may be the only way to obtain the greater levels of social equality that even David Cameron and Theresa May claim to support. That means concentrating on income equalisation rather than occupational mobility.

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