The New Account of Mobility

Abstract

If the evidence of Glass’s work is to be rejected, and with it many of the conclusions based upon it, the main alternative sources of data are the national mobility studies carried out in the 1970s. These are the Oxford studies of England and Wales, in particular what is probably the best known account produced by John Goldthorpe (1980a), and the Scottish Mobility Study, directed by the author. These studies are not without their own problems. The choice of classification and indices, the balance of the commentary on the data, and the conceptual perspectives, are all open to varying degrees of criticism. However, rather than leaving a vacuum, it is better to compare some of the features of the two studies, and to present some illustrations from the Scottish Mobility Study to show how an occupational approach throws a new light on mobility (a much fuller account is to be found in Payne, 1986).