Social Mobility
Mobility stands for shift, change and movement. The change may be of a place or from one position to another. Further, change is value free i.e it cannot be said that change is for good or bad. When we prefix “social‟ along with mobility it would imply that people or individual occupying a social position, move to another position or status.
In the social ladder, this movement may be upward or downward or it may be inter-generational or intragenerational. In short, social mobility stands for change in the position of an individual or a group of individuals from one status to another.
On mobility Sorokin was the first sociologist who wrote the book “Social and Cultural Mobility”. He was of the opinion that there is no society that is closed (Caste System in India) and no society which is completely open (Class System). He further contended that no two societies are exactly the same in the amount of movement allowed or discouraged. Further, the speed of movement or change may differ from one period of time to another. The rate of change depends upon the level of modernization of a given society.
For example, a rickshaw puller’s son becomes a lawyer; a clerk’s son becomes a doctor. In each case, a change in role between father and son provides the latter with more of the good things of life. The roles of lawyer, doctor and engineer require initiative, training and self-sacrifice.
Persons are motivated according to a complex variety of factors to work toward new roles, with their higher status and greater rewards. The good things of life are scarce and individuals must compete, conflict and cooperate with others to gain them. The mobile individual must constantly adapt to socially unfamiliar situations a new class, new norms, new values. A member of a closed society spends his life in an environment that is familiar to him. In other words, an open society, with its high degree of mobility, does not guarantee happiness.
Definition of Social Mobility:
P. A. Sorokin, “Social mobility is understood any transition of an individual or social object or value anything that has been created or modified by human activity from one social position to another”.
Wallace and Wallace: “Social mobility is the movement of a person or persons from one social status to another”.
W. P. Scott: Social mobility refers to “the movement of an individual or group from one social class or social stratum to another”.
Difference between horizontal and vertical social mobility:
Source: Social and cultural mobility by Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (1941:136)
P. A. Sorokin (1941: 133-134) has distinguished between two principal types of social mobility, horizontal and vertical. These forms of social mobility are differentiated in the following—
Horizontal Social Mobility: By horizontal social mobility or shifting, it meant the transition of an individual or social object from one social group to another situated on the same level. It indicates a change in position within the range of the same status. For instance, we see the transitions of individuals, as from the Baptist to the Methodist religious group, from one citizenship to another, from one family (as a husband or wife) to another by divorce and remarriage, from one factory to another in the same occupational status, are all instances of social mobility.
For examples:
A college graduate with a degree in chemistry planned to work in the research department of a large chemical company, but after a year he finds that the work seems dull and repetitive, with no improvement in sight. He quits that job and instead becomes a professor of chemistry at a nearby university. Because the two occupations are at roughly the same level his mobility involved no essential change of status; it was simply a move to a more satisfying job.
An engineer working in a factory may resign his job and join another factory as an engineer and may work in more or less the same capacity, or join an engineering college and start working as a professor. In this example also, though there is a change of workplace and work, the general status of the person does not change much.
Vertical Social Mobility: By vertical social mobility is meant the relations involved in a transition of an individual (or a social object) from one social stratum to another. According to the direction of the transition, there are two types of vertical social mobility:
Ascending (social climbing): The ascending currents exist in two principal forms:
As infiltration of the individuals of a lower stratum into an existing higher one.
As a creation of a new group by such individuals, and the insertion of such a group into a higher stratum instead of, or side by side with, the existing groups of this stratum.
Descending (social sinking): The descending current has also two principal forms:
The first consists in a dropping of individuals from a higher social position into an existing lower one, without degradation or disintegration of the higher group to which they belonged.
The second is manifested in a degradation of a social group as a whole, in a basement of its rank among other groups, or in its disintegration as a social unit.
On the above points, the first case of “sinking” reminds one of an individual falling from a ship; the second of the sinking of the ship itself with all on board, or of the ship as a wreck breaking itself to pieces.
For example::
Movement from the status of a plumber to that of a corporation president, or vice versa, is an example of vertical mobility.
Movement of people from the poor class to the middle class, from the occupation of labourers to that of bank clerks, from the position of the opposition to that of the ruling class, etc.
Sorokin attributes these differences mainly to inherent biological causes, and fears that the “racial fund” of vigour and talent may be depleted through differential fertility. He finds that high mobility has historically been associated with versatility, invention, and discovery; but also with cynicism, social isolation of the individual, skepticism, moral disintegration, and suicide.
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