One of the most important contributions of the FJH
hypothesis (1975) is how occupational/class mobility studies between industrial
countries became consolidated. Furthermore this hypothesis influenced the
creation of the Model of Core Fluidity proposed by Erikson and Goldthorpe (EG)
(1987a, 1987b), whose objective was not only comparing occupational patterns in
industrial(?) countries, but also improving the methodology of how the FJY
should be tested. One of the main conclusions of their analysis is a
re-definition of the FJH hypothesis since states’ forces should be explicitly acknowledged
in order to understand the feature of occupational mobility patterns in these
societies. The last wave of comparative analyses, led by Breen (2004) whereby
two new variables are introduced i.e. time and gender, seem to bury the FJH
hypothesis since some of the countries analyzed show different patterns of
fluidity which contradict the assumption that relative mobility rates are likely
to be similar among industrial countries. I have, however, the unfortunate
impression that both group of authors, regardless of their very important
findings and indeed impressive methodological enterprises, miss a decisive
aspect of the FHJ hypothesis—which for the Erickson and Goldthorpe case is more
relevant than the studies led by Breen—and that is its unfalsifiability.
The emergence of the FJH hypothesis can be
associated to some limitations faced by the explanatory power which
functionalism faces, whereby the notion of absolute mobility was considered to
be a hallmark of the so-called industrial societies. In short these authors
acknowledge that the economic dimension remains the most important variable to
explain the distribution of a hierarchical order of occupations, but this
dimension can explain circulation
mobility rather than absolute mobility. The force behind this pattern is
literally the distribution of socioeconomic status, which in their
operationalization is the conjunction of three elements: “income, authority
relationships within and between occupation groups, and education” (Featherman,
Jones and Hauser, 1975:335). Their
analysis of two cases, USA and Australia, confirm the latter since both
countries show convergence in terms of how decisive the socioeconomic status
of individual’s parent and personal
achievements are in the individual’s occupational attainment: “[In both
countries] there exists a relative stable process of status transmission in a
class of industrial societies (…) and that this process changes in its
phenotypical expression according to the rate at which the occupational system
is transformed over time” (Featherman, Jones and Hauser, 1975:340). Lastly,
these authors acknowledge that, given some discrepancies between Australia’s
and USA’s mobility rates, some idiosyncratic features of every society’s
stratification need to be considered in order to explain the difference in
terms of fluidity[1].
The case of African-American for instance, is an important feature of the
latter since their study, and also Blau and Duncan’s, describe the effects of
discrimination in this group of individuals. However the latter might be what
seems to heavily structure the occupations of society is the economy in
conjunction with political institutions
(Featherman, Jones and Hauser, 1975:358).
In order to test the similar patterns of fluidity in
industrial countries EG advance a very impressive and sounding methodological
approach. One of the very first elements, they change however, is the variable
which measures mobility, while FJH use a more graded option i.e. socioeconomic
status, EG opt for class. A second element that EG highlight is a somewhat
arbitrary distinction between strict and less strict form of the FJH
hypothesis. I believe is arbitrary because one the FJY hypothesis is explicitly
ambiguous in the wording. In other words, since what is at stake is the “similarities”
among countries, and not how identical countries can be in terms of fluidity,
EG’s rigid interpretation is more likely to be unfavorable to the acceptance of
the FJH hypothesis. More concretely they reject the hypothesis as their first
model shows in table 4 (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1987:60), whereby the G2
is statistically significant. Once they acknowledge that the hypothesis can be
however interpreted in a looser way,
they face the most important question: “How is a ‘basic’ similarity in relative
rates to be recognized?” (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1987:61) and after this
impasse they propose the Model of Core Fluidity.
The model of core fluidity starts by spacing the
location of every selected country in a three dimensional map, this allow them
to tackle two challenges: i) identify which country (ies) is (are) at the
center, and ii) establish the distance among the countries. Their results
locate England and France as the core countries, and the other countries
display different relative mobility rates which depart from this first finding.
While this statistical solution seems to be quite promising because there seems
to be two “objective” points (countries) of reference, the result is ultimately
artificial rather than theoretical and therefore certain elements needed to be clarified
further. I have two observations regarding this solution, one intuitive and the
second historical. Firstly, one paradoxical implication of the core model is
its potentiality to be understood in absolute terms, which I think is
impossible. In other words, having England and France as core models of fluidity,
it leaves the impression that we have found the real rates of relative mobility.
However, by definition, I suspect, in order to locate a given element i.e. a
country, in the real universe of
mobility, it needs to be accepted that the axes of the three multidimensional
spacing are infinite, and therefore the core of the universe of mobility can
only be unknown.
Secondly, their historical account, as potential
understanding of why these two countries are the core model, is rather limited
(see endnote 4 of the second part of their article). For instance in reference
to Marx, Giddens points out that the German author saw Britain in a different
“stage” of the revolutionary process in comparison to France because at the
former the evolution of a ‘compromise’ and more stable political system grew vis-à-vis the
expansion of industrialism, whereas the continental country had to deal with
several political crises which made the political system less stable (Giddens,
1973). More precisely, for stratification processes, it is noteworthy that
France was then “split into different fragments, such that the role of the
‘transitional’ class was particularly important” (Giddens, 1973.39). I bring
these two examples because as we will see below one very distinct element which
EG highlight in the formation of classes, and the mobility of the individuals,
is state’s intervention or rather its absence, and under this case it seems
that the French state is quite different from the English.
Furthermore, the struggles of 1968 (time which
necessarily is captured in the French surveys analyzed by EG) also raise the
question of what other criteria are relevant to think that England and France
are more alike. Or in EG’s own terms, is there a solid answer to the implicit
assumption that the ‘Hieracrchy’, ‘Inheritance’, ‘Sector’ and ‘Affinity’
effects for these two countries are rather similar? EG’s potential answer to
this question is rather limited. They acknowledge that—along with the case of
USA—given the English Civil War and the French Revolution (and for that matter the
American Civil War also), these two countries represent the examples of “of the
development of modern industrial societies” (Erikson and Goldthorpe,
1987b:162), but clearly invoking these political events without referring to
their eight matrices creates a lag in their analysis which is not obvious of
how that should be fulfilled.
The analysis of EG is nonetheless very impressive
because they grasp the notion of how different type of barriers, advantages and
desirability can either inhibit or trigger individual class mobility. The
operationalization of these characteristics is done by introducing eight
matrices which represent different ‘cases’ which a society might display in
reference to the obstacles of relative mobility or the presence of structural
mobility. These matrices are very good devices to understand why the countries
analyzed not only depart from the core model but also why they have specific or
idiosyncratic rates of fluidity. For instance, it is interesting to see the
influence of the socialist state in Poland or Hungary, however, the direction
of the influence of this type of state in terms of fluidity remains unsettled.
These findings guide the authors to reformulate the FJH hypothesis, by
introducing the participation of the modern state as a “control” variable which
needs to be consider in order to measure the fluidity of the country, as the
Wisconsin scholars proposed. However, as we could see in the brief revision of
the FJH hypothesis, these authors had already acknowledged the influence of
political institutions in the shaping of these countries. Furthermore, it is
hard to see how these American scholars could have failed to see the importance
of the state in the shaping of society in the comparison of Australia and USA.
On the one hand, it is important to recall that Blau and Duncan had made
explicit the need of implementing public policies to tackle the discrimination
against African-Americans from a public perspective in The American Occupational Structure, or on the other hand, the
heavy influence of Keynes’ work in American social science.
While EG claim having had reformulated the FJH
hypothesis by introducing a yardstick and then test it, a truly test of the FJH
hypothesis could only be done by analyzing two very important variables, time
and gender[2].
The first one, was actually one of the elements foreseen by the American
scholars once they identify the need to carry out analyses over time (Featherman,
Jones and Hauser, 1975:358). Breen et al developed a very thorough account of
eleven countries by formally introducing the core model proposed by EG and then
comparing it to different mobility rates. Two graphs illustrate quite nicely
changes over time (1970-1990) in social fluidity between countries in men and
women respectively. From figures 3.3 (p.59) and 3.5 (p.72), we can appreciate
that the falsification of the FJH hypothesis is almost straightforward. However
they fail to completely reject the economic part of the hypothesis. Firstly, Germany,
France, Italy and Ireland are more likely to be the least fluid, whereas
Hungary and Poland are the most fluid, in other words there is no convergence
towards fluidity in the sample. Furthermore in order to see whether this
pattern of similarity behaves closer to what the FJH postulates it can be
observed that there is no stability of the fluidity rates of the countries analyzed.
In fact there are important divergences that make harder to accept the
hypothesis of common similarity if for instance we consider the case of Sweden
with Hungary or Germany with Holland. Effectively these results reject strongly
the FJH but, what remains uncertain in how strong the economy is in these
effects. At the end of the book Breen and Luijkx actually explore the effect of
the economy by taking GDP as a proxy of this dimension. Even though they admit
this analysis is rather limited, their results are ambivalent towards the
hypothesis that (macro) economy forces are very important variables in shaping
the occupational structure of the societies (Bree and Luijkx, 2004:398). In
other words some elements prove that GDP has an effect on the fluidity patterns
but once the year variable is introduced the GDP effect disappears. The point
about this last attempt to falsify part of the FJH hypothesis, and the
seemingly hard task of disprove it, only speaks of the limitation of how this
hypothesis was conceptualized. Hypothesis building can actually be a difficult
task especially when theories which explain stratification are rather vague or
inexistent.
Breen et al, 2004:59 and 72
References
Breen, R., Ed. (2004). Social Mobility in Europe.
New York, Oxford University Press. Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 15
Erikson, R., and J. H. Goldthorpe. 1987a.
“Commonality and variation in social fluidity in industrial nations: Part I: A
model for evaluating the “FJH Hypothesis.”” European Sociological Review 3.1:
54–77.
Erikson, R., and J. H. Goldthorpe. 1987b.
“Commonality and Variation in Social Fluidity in Industrial Nations: Part II:
The Model of Core Social Fluidity Applied.” European Sociological Review
3.2: 145–166.
Featherman, D.L., F.L. Jones and R.M. Hauser 1975 “Assumptions
of Social Mobility Research in the US: The Case of Occupational Status” Social
Science Research 4: 329-60.
Giddens, A. (1973); The Class Structure of the
Advanced Societyes. Hutchinson University Library.
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