Antonio Schizzerotto

INTRODUCTION: Career mobility, education, and intergenerational reproduction in five European societies

Mobility studies constitute the most technically sophisticated major branch of contemporary sociology, as is well illustrated by the methodological array of this special issue. Perhaps just because of their methodological acumen and evidential scruples, more than any other part of the discipline, they bring forth, frustratingly or fascinatingly, the complex and inconclusive character of social processes, their ‘constant flux’ as Robert Eriksson and John Goldthorpe summed it up in their landmark study. Neither deindustrialization nor globalization seems to have created any new general trend of interand of intra-generational mobility. The long shadow of parental background is still there, varying somewhat between countries. Education matters, but not more than decades ago. Occupational careers have, on the whole, not become more fluid and unpredictable. They are still governed by social birth and education, which sometimes, but not always, accumulate inequalities over the life-course. Editorial credit for this issue goes to Carlo Barone at the University of Trento, Italy, whom I want to thank for a very good job. We have had a serious problem of space to accommodate the full richness of all the contributions. When we finally got the page tally, some cuts had to be made, which the guest editor and the contributors have accepted in good grace. As a modest contribution to austerity, I have refrained from writing a normal editorial. Göran Therborn

CAREER MOBILITY IN ITALY

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of social origins and education for career mobility in contemporary Italy by means of growth curves models. We find that opportunities for career advancement are rather limited and that risks of downward mobility are virtually negligible. Although this picture displays a noticeable degree of stability over time, a moderate increase of career fluidity across cohorts can be detected. Moreover, social origins and education exert a marked influence on the first occupation, while the subsequent career-adjustment of these initial social inequalities is rather limited. Furthermore, the small influence of origins and education on career opportunities does not display any systematic trend across cohorts.

CAREER MOBILITY IN ITALY: A growth curves analysis of occupational attainment in the twentieth century

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of social origins and education for career mobility in contemporary Italy by means of growth curves models. We find that opportunities for career advancement are rather limited and that risks of downward mobility are virtually negligible. Although this picture displays a noticeable degree of stability over time, a moderate increase of career fluidity across cohorts can be detected. Moreover, social origins and education exert a marked influence on the first occupation, while the subsequent career-adjustment of these initial social inequalities is rather limited. Furthermore, the small influence of origins and education on career opportunities does not display any systematic trend across cohorts.

Linking the Macro to the Micro: A Multidimensional Approach to Educational Inequalities in Four European Countries

ABSTRACT Recent research into educational inequalities has shown the importance of decomposing social origins into parental class, status and education, representing economic, socio-cultural and educational family resources, respectively. But we know little about how inequalities in educational attainment at the micro-level map onto institutional characteristics of educational systems at the macro-level, if we treat social origins in a multidimensional way. Drawing on the rich over-time variation in educational systems in four European countries – Britain, Sweden, Germany and Italy – this paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses regarding the effects of various components of social origins on individuals’ educational attainment in different institutional contexts. It is evident from our results that a great deal of similarity exists across nations with different educational systems in the persisting importance for individuals’ educational attainment of parental class, status and education. But our findings also indicate that changes in the institutional features of educational systems have, in some instances although not in others, served to reinforce or to offset the social processes generating educational inequalities at the micro level.

Nudging gender desegregation: a field experiment on the causal effect of information barriers on gender inequalities in higher education

ABSTRACT In this article, we propose and test a novel explanation for gender segregation in Higher Education that focuses on the misperceptions of economic returns to fields of study. We frame this explanation within the literature emphasizing the role of gender-stereotypical preferences and occupational plans, and we argue that counselling activities in school can play a crucial role in either reinforcing or countering the weight of these expressive mechanisms relative to more instrumental considerations involving occupational prospects of different fields. In particular, we suggest that the availability of reliable, ready-to-use information on these prospects enhances the probability that students, particularly females, opt for more rewarding fields. To test this argument, we present the results of a field experiment conducted in Italy that confronted high school seniors with detailed information concerning returns to tertiary education and field of study differentials, and we assess how girls and boys reacted to this counselling intervention.

Career mobility in Italy: a growth curves analysis of occupational attainment over the 20th century

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of social origins and education for career mobility in contemporary Italy by means of growth curves models. We find that opportunities for career advancement are rather limited and that risks of downward mobility are virtually negligible. Although this picture displays a noticeable degree of stability over time, a moderate increase of career fluidity across cohorts can be detected. Moreover, social origins and education exert a marked influence on the first occupation, while the subsequent career-adjustment of these initial social inequalities is rather limited. Furthermore, the small influence of origins and education on career opportunities does not display any systematic trend across cohorts.