Social Mobility

In this chapter the author will attempt to unravel the differences of approach and interpretation surrounding the topic, tracing how understandings of social mobility have developed since the early twentieth century and explaining what is at stake in contemporary conceptions of Britain's mobility crisis. The period after 1918 is covered by the first dedicated, national-level study of social mobility, based on a representative sample survey of more than 9,000 adults, which was carried out by David Glass and a team of researchers at the London School of Economics in 1949. Turning to the subject of social mobility, his initial interest was in movement across the collar-line; between working-class and middle-class positions and how this affected the degree of class formation; in society. In these circumstances both political and academic attention has been drawn back to an issue that was a founding concern of social mobility research before the Second World War: the problem of elites.