Talking the Talk of Social Mobility: The Political Performance of a Misguided Agenda

Abstract

Since 2010, the language of social mobility has been increasingly utilised by UK politicians from across the political spectrum to denote a commitment to ‘fair access’ to opportunity in both education and the professions. Within this policy discourse, the default understanding of inequality is premised on a narrow notion of access to elite education and employment positions, where a deeper understanding of the politics of social reproduction and inequality, or any meaningful emphasis on redistribution, is absent. The social mobility agenda is axiomatically an equality of opportunity agenda where the focus is on ‘levelling up’ those who are considered to be falling behind. Its focus on opportunity to the detriment of outcome thus rules out considerations of structural solutions to inequalities. In this article, we unpack the discourses of social mobility that are prevalent in recent UK government papers and political talk, with a specific focus on the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) in order to consider how these shape policy approaches to education and labour market participation. We argue that the presiding ‘race to the top’ mentality undermines the very equality that the social mobility agenda claims to be seeking to achieve, and in doing so we implicate the SMC in purveying contradictory understandings of mobility that compound and conceal existing inequalities. Through a focus on graduate employment, we problematise the role of higher education in the promotion of social mobility. We consider the role of employers participating in the Social Mobility Employer Index and expose the contradictions between the performance of social mobility and the reality of corporate practices that entrench social inequalities. Our work underscores the need for a new political conversation about social mobility and a redirection of attendant education and employment policy to focus on dismantling rather than reinforcing social hierarchies.

Does grammar school attendance increase the likelihood of attending a prestigious UK university?

“…There seems to be no need to separate children by measured 'ability' at age 11 when they would do equally well in a comprehensive school. Policymakers would do well to turn away from reforms like the expansion of grammar schools, which champion hierarchies and celebrate unequal outcomes in education and beyond (Ingram & Gamsu, 2022), and focus instead on ensuring a high-quality education for all.…”

‘You just need to work harder’: Misalignments between the rhetoric of social mobility and education for social justice

“…In the UK, discourses of social mobility have been increasingly featured in government policies and initiatives. Ingram and Gamsu (2022: 191) suggest that ‘Social mobility is largely accepted as something that is desirable and achievable for both society and individuals and for the last 40 years it has been uncritically utilised by governments on both sides of the political divide to claim a commitment to equality of opportunity’.…”

Professions and inequality: Challenges, controversies, and opportunities

“…But as a range of sociologists has argued (Lawler, 2017;Littler, 2018) this narrow focus on social mobility is not, and cannot be, the solution to class inequality. Indeed, as Ingram and Gamsu (2022) have recently pointed out, discussions about the relationship between professions and inequality must engage with the work professionals do, as well as who they are. Here they point to the paradox that the professional firms taking class most seriously, internally, are arguably the same ones accentuating class inequalities in the work they do externally.…”

“…For example, over the last 30 years, The Big Four professional service firms have been both involved in, and profited from, the privatization and outsourcing of public services and stateowned companies in the UK. This, Ingram and Gamsu (2022) argue, has had direct knock-on effects on people in working-class jobs-including the erosion of working conditions, lowering rates of pay, the loss of defined benefit pensions and increasing casualization of employment (see also Hermann and Flecker, 2013). Similarly, as Ashley (2021) notes, many professions are directly implicated in driving the kind of high pay that has contributed so profoundly to growing income inequality in many Western countries.…”