Social Mobility Essays - Social Inequality, Gender Studies

Social Mobility Meet Sandra, a mother recently divorced from her abusive middle-class husband. Her previous life had been comfortable; she now lives day-to-day with her children, working as a secretary while attending college courses in her little spare time, all while attending to her home and family. She finally ends up attaining her degree, yet can still find no job paying higher than her secretarial job, so she takes on a second job as a grocery checkout person, still barely making ends meet for her family. As described in Ch. 9 of the Giddens text, this woman had obviously worked very hard to attempt to restore her life back to her previous pre-divorce middle-class state. She says, You try to do the responsible thing, and youre penalized, because the system we have right now doesnt provide you with a way to make it. (p. 169) However, she learned the hard way that class is not quite as easy to transcend in this so-called land of opportunity. The United States is the most highly stratified society of the industrialized world. Class distinctions operate in virtually every aspect of our lives, determining the nature of our work, the quality of our schooling, and the health and safety of our loved ones. Yet, remarkably, we, as a nation retain illusions about living in the capitalist land of opportunity, where any average Joe can make his million if he works hard enough. The reality of the our situation is that the US is not as open as we think it may be, meaning that social mobility, or the movement between classes, is not nearly as easy as we may believe. This is due to the fact that many social issues, such as gender, racial, and economic class, serve as barriers that obstruct the path of ones social mobility. Despite our own personal efforts and talents, mobility in our society is primarily based on ones status, and overcoming the stereotypes that accompany ones status makes mobility extremely hard. Before examining how mobility is suppressed within society, it is important to look at what types exist in our industrialized nation. Usually the amount of mobility in a society is a major indicator of its openness. India, for example, is a very closed society, running on a caste system that dictates ones status in life and prohibits any movement between classes. The US has mostly seen structural mobility, which is advancement opportunity made possible by an increase in better-paid occupations at the expense of lower-wage occupations. Since WWII, there has been a large increase in high-paying managerial and executive positions, as well as blue-collar working class jobs. Within this structural mobility, there is upper and downward mobility that can allow a person to either rise or fall in economic class. However, many other elements come into play, making advancements extremely difficult, and class lines deeply imbedded. In our society, as well as every other industrialized nation, mobility is based on the idea that the poor are the lowest of the social strata, and that all mobility continues upwards from that point. Due to this concept, society makes progress for the lower classes particularly difficult, because they guarantee the status of those who are not poor. Herbert Gans examines this concept in his piece, The Positive Functions of Poverty. He gives numerous examples of how the poor see no mobility because they are kept down to benefit the upper classes. Gans also observes that the poor actually contribute to the upper mobility of the non-poor. In fact, many are able to make money off of the poor for their own social gain by providing them with retail, entertainment, gambling, housing, and narcotics. (Gans, p.25) Due to meager education and the stereotypes of being incapable and lazy, the poor enable others to obtain the better jobs. These stereotypes begin while still in school, as seen in Wi lliam Chamblisss piece, Saints and Roughnecks. The Saints were a group of upper class teenage boys, just as delinquent as their lower class counterparts, the Roughnecks. However, due to selective perception and labeling, the Roughnecks were targeted as the bad kids who didnt want to make something of themselves, while the Saints were seen as leaders of