The Global Sociology Blog

The topics of social inequalities, social mobility and precarization have been in the sociological news quite a bit lately, starting with a special edition of the French magazine Sciences Humaines titled “Stalled Social Mobility” that lays out some basic concepts and provide a general overview of the state of social mobility in France.

For the sake of clarity, when it comes to intergenerational mobility, the SH articles distinguish between

• Structural mobility: mobility due to transformations in the social structure
• Net social mobility: individual trajectories
• Observed social mobility: structural mobility + net social mobility = the number of individuals that actually social mobile
• Social fluidity: the respective probability that members of various social categories will attain specific statuses

In addition, the measurement of intergenerational mobility carries a particular importance when it comes to meritocratic claims as it can measure how much mobility is due to “inheritance” (in a broad sense) or individual merit. In other words, it allows claims regarding equality of opportunity. Other measurements include economic mobility (income) and intragenerational mobility (mobility over one’s lifetime).

In the French case, there has been quite a bit of structural mobility while social fluidity has hardly changed and remains limited.

At the current rates of fluidity, it would take two hundred years for the link between social origin and social position to be severed. This explains why structural mobility has increased but net mobility has decreased. Moreover, according to the articles, inequality of access to superior statuses and upper classes. this structural mobility is well-known: strong decline in agriculture, then later, in industry and manufacturing, rise of the service economy. These transformations, as they required a more highly educated population, dragged the entire social distribution upwards.

Indeed, in France and most other Western countries, education remains the main mode of net mobility and social fluidity but it benefits different generations in various ways. In France, it is the generation born before the 1960s that reaped the main benefits from mass education as that generation hit the labor market at times of economic expansion. Conditions started to degrade for the generation that entered the labor market in the 1970s. At this time, a more educated labor force becomes more likely to find itself in situation of underemployment in the sense of having to take jobs for which individuals are overqualified.

And, of course, not all degrees are equivalent. In France, for instance, the general education baccalaureates still carry more prestige (and more potentially profitable prospects) than vocational ones. This means that a great deal of reproduction of inequalities is accomplished through educational tracking. In other words, a slow reduction in educational inequality has translated only in very limited equalization of opportunities.

In other words, the logic of the meritocratic triangle still applies and social original social position still determines education level and social position whereas in a truly meritocratic society, only education would determine social position and social origin would not have such an effect.

L’éducation, un ascenseur social ? via kwout

What we witness instead, is a weakening of the link between social origin and education, with a decline in educational inequalities. Similarly, the link between social origin and social position has been slightly weakened as well. BUT, these meritocratic developments has somewhat negated by a weakening of the link between education and social position: not everyone will find a job corresponding to ones level of qualification and education (see: adjunctification of academic faculty).

The rule of the stratification game then can be depicted through two central concepts: déclassement and precarization. The concept of déclassement was promoted by French sociologist Camille Peugny and there is currently a bit a of a debate between Peugny and economist Eric Maurin who claims that subjective déclassement is a very real perception that people experience but that is not validated by the fact. For Maurin, déclassement is perception, not reality. However, as Peugny shows here, there are problems with the way Maurin conceptualizes declassement:

• By taking into consideration almost exclusively the most extreme cases of déclassement (for instance, the transition from full-time employment to unemployment) while neglecting the more day-to-day forms of déclassement (from long-term to precarized contracts, for instance)
• By using unemployment as almost exclusive criterion and neglecting as déclassement can take place while maintaining employment through reductions in wages and status.
• By neglecting to sort out the effects of structural mobility with precarization, which might actually explain the persistence of fear of déclassement alongside real déclassement.

Based on all this, one might think that déclassement is a matter of changes in the social structure combined with the effects of globalization and global competition. Not so argues John Schmitt in a report for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Starting from this now famous graph:

Schmitt then argues that this state of affairs is the deliberate result of neoliberal policies designed to break unions and deindustrialize. The central point is for him is that a shift in power is at the heart of the increase in inequality: inequality as policy. “Globalization”, “upgrading workforce skills” and other favorite neoliberal explanations for this are just convenient cover:

But after the 1970s, and even more so under Reagan, the tide turned and power relationships changed. Reaganomics worked its magic and neoliberalism prevailed (not just in the US but also around the world through the policies of the IMF and the World Bank). Again, for Schmitt, the key here is not structural factors but power shift in favor of employers, not by chance, but by design.