Educational Upward Mobility

Practices of Social Changes

Antonia Kupfer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137355300
• eBook ISBN: 9781137355317
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

What enables the few working-class people who enter higher education to achieve against the odds? This book offers answers by comparing social contexts, educational institutions and policies in Austria and England to demonstrate a surprising number of similarities behind those who succeed using Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

1

Research Literature on Educational Upward Mobility

Educational upward mobility is a complex topic, so the following literature review on research in the field is rather elaborate. It starts by locating this book in the wider field of social mobility. It then groups studies on educational upward mobility, starting at the microsociological level of motives, proceeding to the meso level of educational institutions, and extending to the macro level of societal factors. Finally, studies with other approaches are considered.

1.1 Review of the field

The topic of educational upward mobility is part of the wider concept of vertical social mobility, which relies on a hierarchical society in which people generally obtain positions based on their income, the prestige of their occupation, and the level and prestige of their formal educational degrees. Social mobility comprises an individual perspective of moving up or down a social ladder and a societal perspective of changing gaps between social classes or social groups of similar economic backgrounds.

Surprisingly, few seem to question social mobility as such and its dependence on societal hierarchy (a recent exception is Reay, 2013). In place of recommending social upward mobility, no one proposes the concept of reducing social hierarchies as a way to increase social equality or improve underprivileged people’s living conditions. Since this book focuses on educational upward mobility among working-class people, it does not present the literature on other important social inequalities, such as those related to gender and ethnicity. However, gender and ethnic inequalities are often intertwined with socioeconomic inequalities, and studies explicitly relating them are taken into consideration.

Social mobility studies generally reference education in terms of the degrees that define individuals’ positions in societies, or its role is debated: does it support social mobility or maintain social hierarchies? This debate is tightly connected to the research area of social inequalities in education. Broadly speaking, findings of low social inequalities in education support education’s contribution to social mobility and findings of large social inequalities refute education’s contribution. In my view, research overwhelmingly reveals social inequalities in education. The literature ascribing reasons for the underrepresentation of working-class people in university degree programs is large. Findings based on rational choice models point to differences in class choices in the area of education due to different costs and benefits (Breen & Jonsson, 2005; Goldthorpe, 1996).

Studies related to Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital reveal a variety of explanations. For example, class differences in access to information on good and bad schools lead to a classed selection of schools that reproduces social homogeneity in schools (Ball, 2003; Ball et al., 1997). However, equal information is not the solution, because the idea of choice assumes a kind of formal equality that obscures the effects of real inequalities (Ball et al., 2002). Choice in general is rooted in the discrimination and classification of places in a hierarchical order that leads working-class people to less prestigious (higher) education institutions (Reay et al., 2005). Such structures as the academic–vocational divide of institutions, curricula, and qualifications play a key role in reproducing inequalities, diverting working-class people onto lower-status vocational tracks (Becker & Hecken, 2008, 2009a, b). Education systems can also be seen as products of inequality, created by decision makers using organizational and institutional structures (Berger & Kahlert, 2005).

Issues of identity are crucial in educational processes, so a lack of positive images of working-class people contributes to their educational disqualification and inadequate academic support (Reay, 2001). Based on internalized images, working-class pupils do not opt for higher education because they expect to fail. Subtle practices in schools work to ‘other’ and exclude working-class teachers (Maguire, 2005). Fees impede or deter some working-class people from studying, fearing large debts (Heine & Quast, 2011). In sum, research has revealed various sources and mechanisms that, individually and together, work to exclude working-class people from higher education.

However, this book focuses on the exception, educational upward mobility, so the following literature review does not include the rich research studies on social inequality in education (e.g., Ball, 2006; Boudon, 1974; Jencks, 1972; Kozlik, 1965; Müller & Karle, 1993; Reay et al., 2006), the debate on whether educational expansion reduced social inequalities in education (e.g., Blossfeld, 1993; Henz & Maas, 1995; Müller & Haun, 1994; Shavit et al., 2007), and the general debate on whether the role of education is to support or to impede social equality (Erikson & Jonsson, 1996).

1.2 Social upward mobility in relation to education

Research on social mobility can be categorized in various ways. Coxon and Jones (1975) grouped key texts partly chronologically and partly according to concepts and measurements of social mobility. Goldthorpe (1985) distinguished concepts of social mobility according to differences in the authors’ normative and political interests. He identified two categories, one that operates within a framework of class structure and another that operates within a framework of social hierarchy or ranking, but this differentiation seems problematic, since a class structure is a social hierarchy. Groß (2008) identified ‘three generations’ of social mobility research since the Second World War that differ mainly in their methodological approaches. Weischer (2011) categorized the field by the investigators’ geographical origins: for example, Anglo-American mobility research.

I would like to offer another approach that addresses the dimensions most crucial for generating social upward mobility. Three broad categories of factors can be identified: individual motives, educational systems, and societal structures. Broadly speaking, these distinctions follow the chronological development of scientific research on the subject as well as sociological levels of analysis, from micro to meso to macro. Since these levels are ideal categories, they are useful for defining the research focus, but social phenomena are not restricted to one level. My overview will not imply, for example, that studies on the individual motives crucial for upward mobility deal only with certain individuals’ motives and not the related societal structures and social contexts.

1.2.1 Motives contributing to upward social mobility

The earliest studies considering the motives crucial for upward mobility started from the assumption of a culturally embedded, universal (although implicitly male) desire to ascend. Following Merton (1938), upward mobility in the United States materializes through individuals’ internalization of the dominant ideology of social ascendency. He clearly linked the micro- and macrosociological levels: ‘our egalitarian ideology denies by implication the existence of non competing groups and individuals in the pursuit of pecuniary success’ (p. 680). His primary intention was to contribute to the research, not on social mobility, but on deviance or anomaly. In a society where the ‘same body of success-symbols is held to be desirable for all’ (p. 680), poverty is associated with crime more often than in more openly stratified societies, such as those in south-eastern Europe. There, according to Merton, people tend to accept social hierarchies, so classes differ in their values and objectives. His observation that most (male) Americans internalize a normative idea of social ascent still seems to be a driving force for acquiring higher education today. Note that the widely shared value of social ascent attributed to US society was reflected among my interviewees in both Austria and Britain. As I will demonstrate in Chapter 4, interviewees expressed ascending aspirations as part of their socialization in working-class families. This value may have spread with other US values and cultural features in European countries after the Second World War.

Like Merton, McClelland (1961) held that social dimensions are crucial for the creation of motives, but he went a step further by distinguishing different motives based on different social contexts. As a psychologist, his main assertion was that economic development depends not only on socioeconomic factors, such as the relations of production, but also on psychological factors, such as motivation: ‘The hypothesis that gave rise to the present study is that achievement motivation is in part responsible for economic growth’ (p. 36). He aimed to explain performance differences by motivations arising from specific personality factors that, in turn, depend on the social context in which they were created. He analyzed the value systems and educational styles of families of different social classes to determine their influence on performance motivation. In addition, he followed Weber (1930), who identified the Protestant ethic as a major element of the attitudes and actions that drive capitalist economy. According to McClelland, Protestant education is partly responsible for high achievement, based on empirical data he collected on the variables ‘mothers’ attitudes’, ‘sons’ values’, ‘entrepreneurial behaviour’, and ‘n Achievement’ in four countries. By ‘n Achievement’, he refers specifically to the desire to do something better, faster, more efficiently, and with less effort. ‘It is not a generalized desire to succeed, nor is it related to doing well at all sorts of enterprises. ... Rather it is peculiarly associated with moderate risk-taking because any task which allows one to choose the level of difficulty at which he works also permits him to figure out how to be more efficient at it, how to get the most benefit (utility) for the least cost’ (1976, p. A).

McClelland’s approach was restricted to measurable behavior. He assumed that motives are relatively general and stable features of personality, coined by early childhood experiences. He followed Winterbottom’s results to conclude that ‘early mastery training promotes high n Achievement, provided it does not reflect generalized restrictiveness, authoritarianism, or “rejection” by the parents’ (1961, p. 345, emphasis original). In his introduction to the revised edition, he retracted his previous statement on the significance of childhood experiences for achievement, arguing that at the time he had ‘accepted the Freudian notion that basic personality drives are laid down in early childhood’, but now thought that n Achievement ‘can be raised in short intensive training courses for adults’ (1976, p. E).

McClelland’s study contributes important insights on children’s socialization and their development and later expression of certain attitudes, motives, and actions. His empirical data demonstrated that the neoclassical paradigm of rational action in the economy is not reflected in reality, but he did not answer questions about whether high achievement actually leads to a higher social position. To find out, we would have to analyze the social contexts in which social ascent takes place: high performance alone would determine social ascent only in a purely meritocratic society, which has never existed. In societies where meritocratic values and practices compete with others – for example, distribution of jobs based on social capital – motivation, achievement, and its impacts would have to be analyzed in relation to social power structures. In addition, McClelland addressed only intentional and consciously evoked education, and missed unintentional and unconscious attitudes and actions. I will show that several of the people I interviewed demonstrated high achievement without aiming to perform well.

Goldthorpe and Lockwood (1963) proposed that people hold different understandings of mobility based on their social position. They discussed whether affluent workers undergo a process of ‘embourgeoisement’, aligning with middle-class people, or whether working- and middle-class alignment have independent causes. The former implies a normative shift: ‘assimilation’ of middle-class values ‘through aspiration’ of working-class members (p. 151), perhaps as part of the post-war Americanization process noted above. In contrast, an independent convergence would rely on the assumption that ‘changes in economic institutions and in the conditions of urban life ... weakened simultaneously the “collectivism” of the [working class] and the “individualism” of the [middle class]’ (p. 152). The authors dismissed both interpretations in their conclusion and stuck to a relatively clear-cut class difference, despite the phenomenon of affluent workers. They still made an important contribution to a more differentiated view of the significance of motives for social mobility: not only between but within social classes. Specific social position is deemed crucial to an individual’s motives.

Goldthorpe and Lockwood called for research that goes ‘beyond the mere surface description of “home-centredness”, “money-mindedness”, “status-striving” and so on’, to find ‘some understanding of how the behavioural patterns in question are related to, and take meaning from, the life-histories and life-situations of the individuals and groups concerned’ (p. 142). They praised three independent studies on the perception of social class, conducted in 1957 in Germany, Switzerland, and England, that ‘recognised that the problem of the “meaning” of respondents’ statements on class and cognate questions could only be overcome by interpreting these statements in relation to respondents’ overall perception, or image, of their society’ (p. 145). These studies were ‘dealing, in other words, with a Gestalt, not with a series of separate and unconnected responses’ (p. 146, emphasis in original text). The authors believed in including the individual’s social position and role in the division of labor into the analysis of motives crucial for social upward mobility. They also supported a change in research methods. Only special qualitative interview techniques can discover the individual motives embedded in social contexts for analysis. My research findings were collected and analyzed using this approach.

Turner (1964) showed that a wide variety of factors and circumstances are crucial for the creation of motives, or, as he called them, ambitions. To Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s insight into intra-class differences in motives, he added social influences, such as gender. He followed Merton in assuming some general values, which he called society’s values, and Goldthorpe and Lockwood in assuming that different classes prefer different values and thus have different motives. His merit consists in pointing out that classes differ in the ease with which they can attain society’s values. Consequently, ‘attainment of worldly success and community prestige may not cease to be a value but may be less salient in the value system of lower classes’ (1962, p. 12).

He distinguished two paths toward upward mobility: a complicated one that extracts high costs in terms of the emotional suffering due to marginality, which he calls ‘class consciousness’, and an easier way, described as ‘prestige identification’. In the former constellation, classes are highly segregated by demands of loyalty to mutually exclusive ingroups and outgroups. In the latter, loyalties follow other patterns than class membership. Another dimension that makes social ascent hard or easy is an anticipatory socialization that does or does not create aspirations. Turner saw the youth subculture as yet another dimension that influenced ambitions. He believes it was mainly independent of class, except for some traits that reflected a class affiliation: for example, the individualism more associated with the middle class. Gender plays a major role; men hold higher ambitions for social ascent than women, who are generally discouraged from upward mobility on their own.

In addition to their social contexts, Turner identified two broad types of ambitions: material and cultural. Material ambitions strive for such tangible goods as a house and a car, whereas cultural ambition emphasizes education. According to Turner, lower-class students prefer material rewards, and middle-class students educational rewards. However, he postulated this difference without relating it to actual differences in obtaining material resources between the classes. His study lacked data on experienced social upward mobility. The life histories in Chapter 4 fill this gap.

More recent social upward mobility research builds on these findings of differences in between-class motives to focus on motives within working-class members. Here, two main conclusions emerge, one emphasizing the importance of parents’ aspirations and mainly mothers’ support of their children, and the second, children and youths’ desires and motivations to attain a college degree and/or to become a professional. In their study of 88 working-class children who made their way successfully through the educational system to become middle-class, Jackson and Marsden (1986) reported both very ambitious, supportive parent(s), mainly from wealthier working-class families in a mid-sized English town, and children’s attitudes that positively influenced their ascent: ‘The majority who lasted were those who, on the one hand, entwined academic ability with a positive orthodoxy and, on the other hand, had pressures behind them bearing on the school’ (p. 171). Most of the educationally upwardly mobile children adopted the school’s values. In some cases, they also consciously or unconsciously rejected their original social milieu, which some experienced as painful, and others did not.

Starting from the parents’ aspirations, Gandara (1995) investigated social upward mobility during the 1960s and 1970s at highly regarded universities in the United States. Her study focused on 50 Mexican-Americans born between 1940 and the early 1950s who completed PhDs, MDs, and JDs. Their parents had low incomes, and fewer than a quarter held skilled jobs. Gandara found a great deal of support, especially from mothers, who created a ‘culture of possibility’ that imbued a strong will to ascend in their sons and daughters. However, the main reason why the participants in this sample obtained their doctorates was their own persistence. To this aspirational socialization, crucial opportunities were added: participation in a college preparatory course and the ability to access the infor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Research Literature on Educational Upward Mobility
• 2  Theoretical Perspective
• 3  Study Methodology
• 4  Social Contexts Enabling Educational Upward Mobility
• 5  Summary and Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index