The constant flux

the long version

This is a study of social mobility within the developing class structures of modern industrial societies based on a unique data-set constructed by Robert Erikson and John Goldthorpe. The focus is on the experience of European nations--western and eastern--in the period of the 'long boom' following the Second World War; but the book also devotes separate chapters to examining the experience of the USA, Australia, and Japan. The authors combine historical and statistical approaches in their analysis of both trends in mobility and of cross-national similarities and differences. They show that wide variation at the level of actually observed mobility coexists with a surprising degree of constancy and commonality in underlying patterns of social fluidity. The empirical results of their study serve as the basis for a critical re-examination of current theories of mobility and for raising more general issues of the proper concerns and methods of comparative macro-sociology.