Social Class & Social Mobility (WJEC Eduqas GCSE Sociology): Revision Note

What is social class?

• Social class is the division of society into groups based on:

  • occupation

  • income

  • status

  • lifestyle

• People in higher classes have greater economic and social power, while those in lower classes have fewer opportunities

• Sociologists use class to understand inequality, identity, and mobility in modern Britain

What is social mobility?

• Social mobility refers to people’s movement up or down the social hierarchy, i.e. between social classes

• It shows how open or closed a society is, and whether it functions as a meritocracy

Types of social mobility

• Intragenerational mobility: movement within a person’s lifetime

  • E.g., through promotion or redundancy

• Intergenerational mobility: movement from one generation to the next

  • E.g., a child achieves a higher social class than their parents

• Routes to upward mobility include:

  • education and qualifications: these can lead to higher-status jobs

  • marriage: to someone of a higher class

  • windfalls: such as inheritance or a lottery win

  • occupational change: e.g. the rise in professional jobs and decline in manual work creating new opportunities

• Barriers to mobility include:

  • educational inequality: working-class students are less likely to attend university

  • discrimination: gender, ethnicity or disability can limit progression

  • the ‘glass ceiling’: this limits women’s promotion prospects

  • social capital: middle-class people have networks and connections that help them access opportunities

  • economic barriers: there are fewer secure, well-paid jobs

    • ONS (2024) show that 13.2% of 16–24-year-olds were NEET (not in education, employment or training), restricting future mobility

Social mobility in the UK

• The Social Mobility Commission (2016) found that Britain has low mobility compared to other developed countries

• A working-class child is only 25% as likely as a middle-class child to reach a professional occupation

• Children born in 1958 were more likely to move up the class system than those born in the 1970s or later

• Upward mobility has slowed, while some middle-class jobs, e.g. clerical work, have experienced downward mobility

Measuring social mobility

• Sociologists face challenges when measuring mobility:

  • Many studies only include men, ignoring women’s experiences

  • People may misremember their parents’ jobs

  • It’s unclear which age or career stage to measure

    • E.g. someone might appear working-class early in their career but later become middle-class

Do we live in a classless society?

• In the past, the working class was associated with:

  • manual work, such as shipbuilding or factory work

  • tight-knit communities, extended families, and trade unionism

  • support for the Labour Party and the idea of collective solidarity

• The middle class included professionals and managers with better pay, education, and living standards

  • They often owned property and emphasised education and home ownership

• Some sociologists argue that class is less relevant in modern Britain, while others believe it still strongly shapes people’s lives

Evaluation

Social class is still important

• Class continues to affect education, jobs, and income

• Marxist sociologists argue that the ruling class still dominates the economy and politics

• The British Social Attitudes Survey (2016) found that:

  • 40% of people identified as middle class

  • 60% identified as working class — the same as in 1983

  • This suggests class identity remains stable despite economic change

• People’s class identity is still shaped by their family background, education, and occupation

• Economic issues such as recessions and zero-hour contracts have made class divisions more visible again

Social class is less important

• The working class has declined due to deindustrialisation

• Trade union membership has fallen since the 1970s

• People now identify more with gender, ethnicity, and lifestyle than with class

• Class dealignment – voting behaviour is less tied to class, e.g., many working-class people now vote Conservative

• Peter Saunders (1996) argues that Britain is a meritocracy where ability, motivation, and qualifications determine success more than background

Research into social class

The affluent worker study (Goldthorpe & Lockwood, 1960s)

• Goldthorpe and Lockwood studied affluent manual workers in Luton car factories and argued that they were part of an emerging 'new working class' who were adopting middle-class values

• They found that:

  • workers had home-centred lifestyles and were focused on material gain (privatised instrumentalism)

  • they supported trade unions only to improve their own wages, not for class solidarity

  • they had an instrumental attitude to paid work, meaning that work was just a means to living a comfortable lifestyle

The affluent worker revisited (Fiona Devine, 1992)

• Devine repeated the study in the 1980s to see if working-class life had changed

• She found that many traditional values still existed:

  • Workers supported trade unions and wanted to improve pay and conditions

  • They criticised the privileges of inherited wealth and rejected the idea that inequality was fair

  • Men were still main breadwinners, but families were less community-centred than before

• Devine rejected the idea of the ‘new working class’ and suggested that affluent workers were critical of capitalism

• She argued that working-class solidarity still existed and that social class identity remained strong