“Explain the concept of social mobility. Describe with suitable illustrations how education and social mobility are related to each other.” (2021)
Pitirim Sorokin (Social Mobility, 1927) defined social mobility as the movement of an individual, group or social object from one position to another in “social space”. In industrial societies the school has become the main gatekeeper of that movement. Whether it opens the gate or guards it is the core of the debate.
The concept
- Meaning: movement between positions ranked by wealth, power and prestige. How much of it occurs depends on how open or closed the stratification system is.
- Forms: vertical and horizontal; intergenerational and intragenerational; structural mobility, created by a changing occupational structure, versus exchange mobility.
- Absolute and relative mobility: John H. Goldthorpe (1980) separated how many people move from the comparative odds of people with different origins. Only relative mobility shows whether a society has become fairer.
- Channels: Sorokin called the school one of the “elevators” of vertical circulation. It is also a sieve that tests, selects and distributes people.
Education as a ladder: functionalist and liberal view
- Talcott Parsons (“The School Class as a Social System”, 1959) saw the school as the place where status is assigned by achievement, not ascription.
- Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan (The American Occupational Structure, 1967) found that a man’s own schooling was the strongest influence on his occupation. Much of his father’s influence worked through that schooling.
- Ralph H. Turner (1960) contrasted American contest mobility with English sponsored mobility, in which the elite selects its recruits early.
Indian illustrations
- B. R. Ambedkar made education the lever of Dalit emancipation. His own rise through scholarships became a model for a generation.
- Reservation is a form of sponsored mobility. Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin (2024) found rising educational mobility among Scheduled Caste sons. A natural experiment in the study suggests affirmative action drove much of that rise.
- Wider access: AISHE 2023-24 puts the higher-education gross enrolment ratio at 30, with 27.8 for SCs and 22.8 for STs.
Education as a filter: conflict and critical views
- Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron (Reproduction, 1970): schools reward cultural capital acquired at home and treat inherited advantage as merit.
- Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (Schooling in Capitalist America, 1976): schooling mirrors the hierarchy of the workplace (correspondence principle).
- Randall Collins (The Credential Society, 1979): as degrees multiply, credentials lose value while good positions stay scarce.
Indian illustrations
- Two-track schooling: English-medium private schools and paid coaching turn family money into exam ranks.
- Educated but not mobile: Craig Jeffrey, Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery (Degrees without Freedom?, 2008) studied educated Dalit and Muslim young men in western Uttar Pradesh who failed to find salaried work. The ILO’s India Employment Report 2024 found that people with secondary or higher education made up 65.7% of the unemployed in 2022, up from 35.2% in 2000.
- Discrimination after the degree: Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell (2007) sent out equally qualified job applications. Those with Dalit or Muslim names received fewer interview calls.
- Low relative mobility: the World Bank’s Fair Progress? (2018) ranked India lowest in educational mobility among its developing-country comparators.
Assessment
The two views describe two sides of one process. Education has clearly raised absolute mobility, producing first-generation graduates and a Dalit middle class. Relative chances change slowly: Asher and colleagues found overall mobility “constant and low” since before liberalisation.
Conclusion
Education is a necessary channel of mobility, but on its own it does not make a society open. In India it has loosened the link between caste and occupation. That gain will hold only if school quality becomes more equal, jobs expand and hiring is fair.