Social Mobility
Ts. Dr. Nur Khairiel Anuar
Logistics and Transport Department
School of Technology Management and Logistics
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Purpose of the study
• To understand the purpose of mobility
• Establish the horizontal and vertical mobility
• Explain the social demography and migration
• understand the factors of change and social values
• Evolutionary Theories
• Attitudes and Values
• Cultural factors
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Reason for Social Mobility
• For various reasons people of the higher status
and position may be forced to come down to a
lower status and position.
• Thus, people in society continue to move up
and down the status scale.
• This movement is called social mobility.
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Stratification
• The study of social mobility is an important
aspect of social stratification (formation into
layer of the group)- through mobility.
• Stratification system refers to the process of
placing individuals in different layers or strata.
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Purpose of Social Mobility
• Social mobility is the degree to which, in a given society, an
individual's, family's, or group's social status can change
throughout the course of their life through a system of social
hierarchy or stratification.
• it is also the degree to which that individual's or group's
descendants move up and down the class system.
• The degree to which an individual can move through their
system can be based on attributes and achievements or
factors beyond their control.
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Types of Mobility
• Horizontal
• Vertical
• Inter-Generational Social Mobility
• Open systems mobility
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Horizontal Mobility
• The former refers to change of occupational position or role of
an individual or a group without involving any change in its
position in the social hierarchy.
• Also refers essentially to changes in the position of an
individual or a group along the social hierarchy.
• When a rural laborer comes to the city and becomes an
industrial worker or
• A manager takes a position in another company there are no
significant changes in their position in the hierarchy.
• Those are the examples of horizontal mobility. Horizontal
mobility is a change in position without the change in status.
• It indicates a change in position within the range of the same
status.
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Vertical Mobility
• It is a movement from one status to its equivalent.
• If an industrial worker becomes a businessman or
• Lawyer, he has radically changed his position in the
stratification system.
• This is an example of vertical mobility.
• Vertical mobility refers to a movement of an individual or
people or groups from one status to another.
• It involves change within the lifetime of an individual to a
higher or lower status than the person had to begin with.
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Inter-Generational Social Mobility
Time Factors
• Time factor is an important element in social
mobility.
• It is a change in status from that which a child began
within the parents, household to that of the child
upon reaching adulthood.
• It refers to a change in the status of family members
from one generation to the next.
• For example, a farmer's son becoming an officer.
• It is important because the amount of this mobility
in a society tells us to what extent inequalities are
passed on from one generation to the next.
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Cont..
• If there is very little inter-generational mobility.
• Inequality is clearly deeply built into the society for
people' life chances are being determined at the
moment of birth.
• When there is a mobility people are clearly able to
achieve new statuses through their own efforts,
regardless of the circumstances of their birthplace.
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Open Systems Mobility
• Open systems mobility is generally characterized with
occupational diversity, a flexible hierarchy, differentiated
social structure and rapidity of change.
• In such systems the hold of ascription (credit) based corporate
groups like caste (class), kinship (association) or extended
family.
• The dominant values in such a system emphasize on equality
and freedom of the individual and on change and innovation.
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City and Village: Continuity and
Change in Social Mobility
• New opportunities for group mobility within the
traditional status hierarchy has been the appearance
in recent decades of new status hierarchies-new
arenas for status competition.
• The impact of urbanization and westernization but
are not independent of the traditional social
organization in which they are based.
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Cont..
• The emergency of industrial employment, of easy
communication over long distances.
• Increasingly efficient distribution of goods and services and of
more effective and centralized.
• Administration has made urban living a more accessible
alternative to more people .
• Urban life affords a measure of independence from the ties
and constraints of membership.
• In rural based social groups by granting a degree of individual
anonymity and less mobility, quite unattainable.
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Migration
• The movement of people from one place to the other to stay
on for a considerable period of time for various reasons is
known as migration.
• Migration is associated with the socio-economic development
of the country.
• One of the side-effects of unprecedented population growth is
industrialization and economic development which helped in a
rapid increase in internal migratory.
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Internal and International Migration
• The movement of people from one region to another within
the country.
• In internal migration there are different forms of migration
such as " Rural-to-rural " Urban-to-urban migration " Rural to
urban migration " Urban to rural migration.
• International migration: Migration from one country to
another country.
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In Migration / Migration Stream
• In Migration - It is the movement into a particular
region within a country.
• Migration Stream - It refers to the total number of
moves made during a given migration interval which
have a common area of origin and common area of
destination.
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Q: The importance of transport in social mobility
END
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