New social mobility: Pioneers and their potentials for change

This chapter discusses the wider societal and theoretical implications of the empirical outcomes presented in the previous chapters. It highlights the importance of what has been described as the ‘multiplier effect’ whereby social climbers accumulate relevant social and cultural capital step-by-step to compensate for the lack of directly useful resources in their families. It revisits some of the other central theoretical frameworks referred to in this book, such as Bourdieu’s capital theory and the integration context theory. The empirical chapters emphasize the importance of social and cultural capital, but not as it is set out in Bourdieu’s reproduction theory. In this book, these forms of capital, mostly acquired along the way, help to explain the extraordinary social mobility of this pioneering group. The integration context theory, originally developed to aid understanding of educational careers, also proved to be of use when trying to understand labour market careers in specific professional sectors. It underlines the importance of gatekeepers and national or context specific arrangements in certain professional fields which together produce the particular types of pathways in this study. We further describe some of the paradoxes that especially characterize the situation of social mobility pioneers from immigrant families. In addition to the well-known ‘integration paradox’, the authors identify a ‘meritocratic paradox’, a ‘discrimination paradox’, a ‘social and cultural capital paradox’ and an ‘ethnic capital paradox’ that all originate in a social setup in which (a) the population of ‘migrant background’ continues to be widely seen as ‘different’ and ‘Other’ to the imagined National Self, and (b) socially upwardly mobile individuals still represent a small minority in many leading professional fields. The chapter ends by underlining the potential that societies miss out on by not taking more active steps to incorporate the native-born ‘second generation’. It summarizes what we believe is new about New Social Mobility as compared to similar processes among young working-class people without a migration background.