The Missing Link? The Relationship between Spatial Mobility and Social Mobility

Abstract

Sociological writing on social mobility has neglected to consider whether upward social mobility is linked to an individual's geographical mobility. This paper argues that there is no necessary link, but that in post-war Britain, where much intra-generational social mobility has been linked to workers' being promoted through internal labour markets of bureaucratic organisations this frequently means that these workers have to be re-located to different sites of that organisation. In these circumstances there is a significantthough under-researchedlink between social and spatial mobility. I argue that this type of upward social mobility is however becoming less important as public and private sector organisations have retrenched in recent years. thence the link between social and spatial mobility has declined. I speculate on the implications of this for patterns of class formation and political alignment. In this paper I will examine the hypothesis that social mobility is linked to geographical mobility, so that those individuals who are best able to move geographically are also most likely to achieve intragenerational social mobility (i.e. within the course of their working life). In itself this seems a perfectly reasonable idea: after all there are many studies which state that promotion depends on workers being prepared to move location (e.g. Crompton andJones 1984, Prandy et al. 1982). It is however rather disarming to realise that these studies nearly always note this in passing and rarely give the issue any sustained analytical attention. This partly reflects the fact that despite the considerable sophistication of social mobility studies they nearly all remain uninterested in spatial issues. Thus the Nuflield Mobility Study reported by Goldthorpe et al. (1980) does not consider whether there are any regional or local differences in the pattern of social mobility but simply assumes that a national survey should be the appropriate spatial unit of analysis. The Scottish Mobility Study The British Journal of Sociology Volume =vUiXIX Number 4 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.186 on Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:43:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The missing link? 555 reported by Payne (1987a, 1987b) claims to consider the specificity of the Scottish case, but then blithely concludes that the patterns found in Scotland are probably typical of other Western industrial countries. This neglect of the sub-national dimension is more surprising in the light of Payne's arguments that social mobility is closely related to patterns of occupational change. Since we know that occupational change is spatially differentiated within the UK (see e.g. Massey 1984) it seems probable that different patterns of social mobility must be found in different areas, but this issue is not raised, let alone resolved. In part the neglect of spatial issues by sociologists reflects the fact that geographical literature on spatial mobility has been rather poor. It is well known that spatial mobility is highly socially specific (e.g. Johnston et al. 1974) with higher social groups being more mobile, but there has been little sustained attention to the causes and consequences of this. In a similar vein the recent quite dramatic decline in long distance migration has hardly been noted, let alone explained. Most of the possible explanations remain untested hypotheses. Consider, for instance the argument focusing on the growth of female economic activity rates, so increasing the number of dual earner households (e.g. Abercrombie and Urry 1983: 138). In these circumstances, it is argued, it is more difficult for one earner to move in order to take on a job elsewhere since the other earner in the household will lose their job. Now while this may appeal as a commonsense explanation, there are no studies which make any attempt to demonstrate it. In fact two theoretical considerations can instantly be advanced against it: firstly that many of jobs usually done by women are in demand throughout the country (and hence they may be relatively mobile) and secondly that given inequality within the household a man's decision to move for a better job may be given preference over any loss of job or career the woman may suffer. The reason for the neglect of issues of geographical mobility owes much to the dominance of a perspective whereby mobile capital is contrasted with a largely static workforce (e.g. Urry 1981, Massey 1984, Harvey 1985) . Whereas radical geographers have become rather expert in analysing the mobility of capital, the mobility of people is at best seen as theoretically un-interesting, and at worst politically diversionary. Yet in order to subtantiate many of the arguments made about the social implications of the restructuring of contemporary capitalism it is in fact vital to consider the issue of migration. Consider, for instance, Urry's well known argument (1981) that the hyper-mobility of capital tends to lead to 'local social movements' as different social groups within localities ally to bid for footloose investment, so helping to undermine class based politics in the process. This argument would only hold if it were true that all social groups within a locality were equally fixed to it, so that they all needed to ally to encourage investment. In fact, if some social groups This content downloaded from 157.55.39.186 on Tue, 12 Apr 2016 09:43:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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