Social Mobility:
Social mobility is one of the essential components in society. It is all about the certain class and where one lies in it. More importantly, it's the process of individuals ascending and descending from different classes through mobility.
This article particularly looks at some the statistics of men in England and Wales of their current and probability of of changing classes. The classes consist of working (blue collar), intermediate, and service (white collar). There is the idea of the inter-generational mobility of leaving behind or staying in the social class that one's family has occupied for generations. Overall, it kind of spoke for itself in the fact that they are not really any drastic movements in mobility and everyone will stay in their class their entire lives or by chance completely fall from grace or go on to glory.
It is also interesting to see that there is no information on women as well as minorities in this sense. I guess they obviously weren't of any importance in 1972 as well as not enough data to translate into some type of statistic, which I feel would make better research for this overall piece. The economy was slightly a little different as in '72 and in England and Wales in comparison to other parts of the World.
I was reminded of this article in looking at the American Dream, if you work hard you can achieve anything. On the contrary of the article, I feel statistics could show even less in the working class and higher amounts in the intermediate and white collar categories. Nowadays, individuals can make drastic leaps and falls in between classes. Currently with the economy, there probably and have been some drops in social mobility, but in the brighter side, in America there lies opportunities to make that leap or missed opportunities to fail.
Finding Work: Some Basic Results
This article looks at the ways in which people find and are hired for jobs. People can find jobs in some of the strangest ways as well as their motives in getting jobs that they want or need. The ways in which were discussed were formal means, personal contacts, and direct application. The purpose was to look at how people found jobs based off of level of job satisfaction, income, origin of job, age, religious or cultural background, and occupational category.
In the different tables, I could see why each came to their conclusion. In the first and third table, people were very satisfied with their method of obtaining their job as well as origin of their job and being directly replaced which can be the traditional approach. I would be as well and to be very fortunate that their method worked out for them.
I had never really thought about different ways to go about finding a job. There is always the typical job of looking for the qualifications that apply to you and pursuing the job. Formal means show the significance and respectability that an employer has when they are looking for employees. I believe that this is the most common way. Personal contact is not as prevalent as it used to be. I remember the saying, "it's not what you know, but who you know" to get you in the doorway of getting a job. It causes conflict that the qualified candidate gets sidestepped because someone who has a good relationship with the employer can get someone they know a job. Yet surprisingly in two of the tables, job finding by age and religious or cultural background, that was the highest percentage of methods used. I can completely understand the religious standpoint, due to the fact that may the employer and those that work there have certain feelings pertaining to this religion and if this friend of friend does not mention it, they couldn't be any reason to have in hiring. I have never know direct application to ever work.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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The statistics showed that a large portion of people remain in their class. I like the point Monty brought up about inter-generational mobility. We all, even if we aren’t thinking about it now, want the best for our hypothetical children. Reading this article also made me think about the American dream and how anyone can do anything in the face of adversity. We know this isn’t the case and that the rich have more opportunities and are more likely to stay in the upper class then anyone from the bottom rising up. I don’t think women were included because it was easier to track men or the author believed the male would determine the families’ class. Another error in the statistics is it fails to include age into account. Are they following 20-45 or 30-55 year olds? It may not have a great effect on the statistics but another theorist could support or disprove this Breen and Rottman. As Monty talked about with our current recession I’m sure these statistics would be greatly different with far less upward mobility unless the guidelines were adjusted accordingly. I would imagine as the gap between the rich and poor grows mobility back and forth between poor and middle class is far easier then anything else.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the graphs I found direct application to remind me of formal means. At first glance it was confusing. I think it should be label promotion or something better fitting. I thought all levels of jobs and incomes would have had a higher amount of applications by formal means. I like most people and especially blue collar workers have gotten most jobs by formal application. I would imagine with managerial and professional jobs there would be an even greater application process by formal means. I thought personal contacts were a rarer occurrence then what the statistics showed. It is true that knowing certain people can help you. There is even a program for soldiers that guarantee them an interview with 261 companies participating in the PaYS program including 39 Fortune 500 companies, three Fortune 1000 companies and four Global 500 companies. This is a smaller example but many people use family and friend connections to obtain jobs or interviews.
Social Mobility:
ReplyDeleteOne of the First things Monty points out is “Social mobility is one of the essential components in society” and “the process of individuals ascending and descending from different classes through mobility.” I cannot agree with that statement anymore, but I would also like to add for my personal definition of Social mobility, is that what determines a person from either ascending or descending is a result of their actions. If a an individual decides to push themselves and work towards their goals, staying where they are at or ascending are inevitable, but if a person does not push themselves and does not work hard towards their goals then they will be either stuck or descend. I believe Monty shares similar a thought process as it is made evident towards the end of the blog with reference to the American dream.
Another important aspect Monty pointed out was there was no data on females or minorities, as I was reading I thought the same thing. But the author did state that “there is much evidence to suggest that the inclusion of women in mobility studies does not change conclusions about social fluidity based on men-only studies.” As well this study was done in 1972 a lot has changed since then. With the push for higher education and more support from the government in regards to loans and pell grants, being stuck in a specific class, particularly poor it would be hard. Nowadays it seems it would be harder to descend that to ascend, but then again I could be completely wrong.
Finding Work: Some Basic Results
Monty hits it dead on with the quote "it's not what you know, but who you know." But I also believe he missed the underlying agreement the author was trying to make in this article. Which is in order to get a good job you have to go about it through personal contacts, Personal contacts have the chance to yield the greatest outcome. The problem is not everyone has the “right contacts.” This can result in disparities among people, and exclude people from those same opportunities just because they did not know anyone. For example, if you have subject A and Subject B both applying for the same job and Subject B is more qualified then subject A but subject A knows the boss that is hiring very well, the Author of this article would conclude that subject A would be more prone to being hired. With the onset of higher education and higher standards, I believe this type of scenario is becoming less and less prevalent. After all this article was first published in 1974, I would like to see another study done to see if it validates it.