This article explores how first-in-family-graduate Roma and non-Roma Hungarians from the working-class experience education-driven social mobility and reconcile the dislocation of their primary-habitus due to changing class through transiting a "third space." Drawing on Bhabha's and bell hooks' development of this concept, we aim to…

Although there have been calls to expand mentoring as way to redress the growing problem of economic immobility in the United States, no study to date has directly examined whether mentoring and economic mobility are related. Using multiple waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and employing a propensity score…

There is a growing concern in this country that the middle class is disappearing and not in the way one would hope. Instead of families moving into a higher socio-economic class and being able to provide richer life experiences for themselves and their children, vast numbers are shifting to a lower socio-economic status level. The gap between the…

Internships have become an important means to enhance career prospects in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. This article used positional conflict theory to explore how university students from different social class backgrounds experience internships, and the implications for inequalities in post-graduation employment. One-hundred…

Inequality in the United States has been rising in recent decades, while intergenerational mobility remains low. This means that absolute mobility--the extent to which children are economically better off than their parents--is declining, and intergenerational inequality is increasingly entrenched. A long literature suggests large returns to…

This article responds to the Alba, Kasinitz and Waters' commentary on the authors' article. The authors state that not all kids are doing "all right," and the substantial number at risk of social and economic stagnation or downward mobility looms as a significant social problem. They contend it is true that right-wing commentators may pick on…

As with the collapse of the subprime lending industry, the showdown between for-profit colleges and the government shows how the aspirations of the underserved, when combined with lax regulation, make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. For-profit colleges provide high-cost degree programs that have little chance of leading to high-paying…

This article draws on extant research from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, and economics to identify linkages between individual, family, community, and structural factors related to social mobility for African Americans during the transition to adulthood. It considers how race and class together affect opportunities for social mobility…

This article attempts to provide some transparency with regard to how the intersection of race and class negatively affects African Americans in their effort to fight for social justice with regard to classism. Based on the explicit historical attempt to definitively make race and class synonymous, such a manufactured intersection is powerfully…

This study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (comprised of three subsamples taken in 1979) to characterize the siblings of middle class and poor Blacks and Whites, testing for racial differences in the probability of having a sibling on the other side of the socioeconomic divide. In support of theories in the urban poverty…

Demonstrates that the number of low income or "underclass" Black families has increased over the past decade, while the proportion of low income Black families in the general population has remained relatively unchanged. However, there does not seem to be a widening economic cleavage within the Black community itself. (Author/GC)

Examines data on middle class Black mobility from (1) a traditional methodological orientation and (2) a historical and sociocultural perspective that considers the development of the Black community. Discusses why the two perspectives produce different results regarding the socioeconomic status of the parents of middle class Blacks. (GC)

Federal social programs in the 1960s allowed for the emergence of a Black middle class. Current government proposals for massive budget cuts in social programs limit the traditional avenues of access to the middle class and deny many poor Blacks the opportunity to attain the American dream. (Author/MJL)

Class differences and class warfare have existed since the beginning of western civilization, but the gap in income and wealth between the rich (top 10 percent) and the rest has increased steadily in the last twenty-five years. The U.S. is heading for a financial oligarchy much worse than the aristocratic old world that our Founding Fathers feared…

A study was conducted to compare the gain received from vocational education by those from low socioeconomic backgrounds to the gain received by those from high socioeconomic backgrounds to determine whether the postsecondary vocational education system lessens the gap between the social classes. Business/office, distributive, health, and…