Where’s the Occupation in Occupational Mobility? - Using nationally representative data from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Japan, we show that (a) micro-classes are an important conduit for social reproduction, (b) the most extreme rigidities in the mobility regime are only revealed when analyses are carried out at the micro-class level, (c) much of what shows up as big-class reproduction in conventional mobility analyses is in fact micro-class reproduction in disguise, and (d) trends in big-class reproduction are different than trends in micro-class reproduction.
Keywords: Social mobility, Inequality of opportunity, Social reproduction, Comparative Studies, Occupational stratification