Increasing social mobility is the ‘principal goal’ of the current Coalition Government’s social policy. However, while mainstream political discourse frames mobility as an unequivocally progressive force, there is a striking absence of studies examining the long-term impact of mobility on individuals themselves. In British sociology the most influential research was carried out by Goldthorpe 40 years ago and argued that the mobile were overwhelmingly content with their trajectories. However, using a critique of Goldthorpe as its springboard, this article calls for a new research agenda in mobility studies. In particular, it proposes a large-scale re-examination of the mobility experience – one which addresses the possibility that people make sense of social trajectories not just through ‘objective’ markers of economic or occupational success, but also through symbols and artifacts of class-inflected cultural identity. Such enquiry may yield a richer account that explains both the potential social benefits and the costs of mobility.
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