Social Mobility

Definition
 The movement of an individual or group from
one social class or social stratum to another.
 Types of Social Mobility:
 1. Horizontal
 2. Vertical
 3. Intergenerational
Horizontal Social Mobility
 A change in one’s social position without a
corresponding change in one’s general position
in a prestige hierarchy or social-class level. e.g.
Promotion from Assistant Professor to
Associate Professor
Vertical Social Mobility
 Movement between different social classes or
status levels of a society or a system of
stratification, that is, upward or downward
mobility, involving a gain or loss of class status
or prestige.
Intergenerational Social Mobility
 A vertical change of social status from one
generation to the next. In studying upward or
downward mobility, usually the son’s or
daughter’s occupational status is compared
with his or her father’s or mother’s.
Relative Deprivation and the Concept of
Reference Group
 The meanings of the concepts of “Relative
Deprivation” and “Reference Group” in social
mobility.
 These two related notions are derived from a
familiar truism: that people’s attitudes,
aspirations and grievances largely depend on
the frame of reference within which they are
conceived.
Relative Deprivation
 Deprivation or disadvantage measured not by
objective standards but by comparison with
the relatively superior advantages of others.
 In addition, relative deprivation means that the
sense of deprivation is such as to involve a
comparison with the imagined situation of
some other person or group.
 This other person or group is the ‘reference
group’
Reference Group
 A group or social category that an individual
or a group uses to help define his or their
beliefs, attitudes, and values and to guide his or
their behavior.
 The aspiring individual or group identifies with
the reference group without actually becoming
member of it.
Types of Reference Group
 Comparative Reference Group
 Normative Reference Group
 Membership Reference Group
Comparative Reference Group

 is the group whose situation or attributes a

person contrasts with his own. e.g. a
prosperous entrepreneur emulating the
fortune of his rival or a clerical worker trying
to distinguish his manner of speech from that
of manual workers.
Normative Reference Group
 is the group from which a person or group
takes his or their standards. e.g. In the process
of Brahmanization, an aspirant from lower
caste adopting the religious and cultural
ideologies and practices of Brahmans whom he
or they regard as the ‘true’ followers of
‘Dharma’.
Membership Reference Group
In the process of overcoming relatively
deprived condition and uplifting oneself from
such disadvantageous situation, an aspirant or
an aspiring group attains the status of his or
their reference group and also insists on
becoming a member of such reference group.
In this process of overcoming relative
deprivation, this aspirants become acutely
conscious of their membership in the present
group.