Suspended in 2025/26
SO4C3 Half Unit
Social Mobility, Politics and Meritocracy
This information is for the 2025/26 session.
Course Convenor
Prof Mike Savage
Availability
This course is available on the MSc in Inequalities and Social Science. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process.
This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access). Places are allocated based on a written statement, with priority given to students who have this course listed in their programme regulations.
Course content
The analysis of social mobility has been one of the strongest specialisms in sociology since the 1950s. It addresses how far inequality of outcomes may be related to inequality of opportunity, by considering the prospects of upward and downward mobility from different social positions. It raises fundamental questions about how inequalities of class, gender, race ðhnicity, nationality (and other axes) shape people’s social trajectories. This course will introduce students to theoretical and methodological issues in the study of social mobility, including structural analyses of frequency and propensity along with qualitative studies of the experience of mobility and immobility. The course will consider exemplars of cutting-edge studies across the globe. Students will be introduced to the best contemporary exemplars of social mobility research to inform them in their own studies.
Teaching
This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.
This course is delivered through a combination of lectures, seminars and online materials totalling a minimum of 20 hours in the WT.
Formative assessment
Students will be expected to produce a 1000 word book review in week 6 of WT.
Students will sit a test on interpretation of quantitative analyses of social mobility in week 4 of WT.
Indicative reading
Mike Savage, The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of History, Harvard University Press, 2021.
Shamus Khan, Privilege, Princeton UP, 2010
Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, The Class Ceiling: why it pays to be privileged, Bristol University Press, 2019
Lee Eliot Major and Stephen Machin, Social Mobility and its Enemies, Penguin, 2019
Khan, S.R., 2012. Privilege: The making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul's School (Vol. 56). Princeton University Press.
Rivera, L.A., 2015. Pedigree: How elite students get elite jobs. Princeton University Press.
Reay, Diane, 2018, Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes, Polity
Assessment
Essay (100%, 5000 words) in May
Attendance at all seminars and submission of all set coursework is required.
Key facts
Department: Sociology
Course Study Period: Winter Term
Unit value: Half unit
FHEQ Level: Level 7
CEFR Level: Null
Total students 2024/25: Unavailable
Average class size 2024/25: Unavailable
Controlled access 2024/25: NoCourse selection videos
Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.
Personal development skills
- Self-management
- Team working
- Problem solving
- Application of information skills
- Communication
- Application of numeracy skills
- Specialist skills