Breaking the 'class' ceiling? Social mobility into Britain's elite occupations

In this paper we use the unusually large sample size of the Great British Class Survey to compare rates of social mobility into different elite occupations. We find a distinction between ‘traditional’ professions, such as law, medicine and finance, which are dominated by the children of higher manag...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Sociological review (Keele) 2015-05, Vol.63 (2), p.259-289
Main Authors: Friedman, Sam, Laurison, Daniel, Miles, Andrew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cultural Capital
elite
Elites
Finance
income
Inheritance and Succession
Low Income Groups
Occupations
Professions
Sample size
Social capital
Social classes
Social Mobility
Traditional Medicine
Upward mobility
Values
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Summary:In this paper we use the unusually large sample size of the Great British Class Survey to compare rates of social mobility into different elite occupations. We find a distinction between ‘traditional’ professions, such as law, medicine and finance, which are dominated by the children of higher managers and professionals, and technical or emerging high-status occupations, particularly those related to IT, that appear to recruit more widely. Second, we find that even when the upwardly mobile are successful in entering elite occupations they invariably fail to accumulate the same economic, cultural and social capital as those from privileged backgrounds. While many such differences may be explained by inheritance, we also find that the mobile tend to have considerably lower incomes. Investigating this further we demonstrate that even when controlling for important variables such as schooling, education, location, age, and cultural and social capital, the upwardly mobile in eight occupations – located largely in the business sector – have considerably lower incomes than their higher-origin colleagues. These findings underline the value of analyses of mobility into specific high-status occupations as well as illustrating how, beyond entry, the mobile often face considerable disadvantage within occupations.
ISSN:0038-0261
1467-954X
DOI:10.1111/1467-954X.12283