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Social Reproduction and Mobility in Britain and Ireland in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

School of Social Sciences University of Cardiff

Wendy Bottero

Department of Sociology University of Southampton

This article presents some preliminary results from a historical study of social mobility in Britain and Ireland, from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The study is marked by a unique combination of features: (1) it follows families for up to five generations, through both maternal and paternal lines; (2) it uses a continuous measure of social position, rather than class categories; (3) this measure is derived from data on social interaction - correspondence analyses of cross-tabulations of the occupations for marriages taking place in the periods 1777-1866 and 1867-1913; (4) each individual's social position is summarised by a work-life trajectory, represented by his social location at ages 20 and 50. The analyses are based on twelve ten-year birth cohorts from 1790-99 to 1900-09. The results indicate a remarkable degree of stability of social processes of reproduction throughout this period, although there is an extremely slow shift towards a weakening of family influence. This process appears to have accelerated for those born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a period of both educational reform and major change in Britain's industrial organisation.

Key Words: credentialism • industrialisation • occupation • social mobility • social reproduction

Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 2, 265-281 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/S0038038500000171


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