Criticisms of the analysis of social mobility using the structural mobility/exchange mobility distinction are discussed, and its replacement by an absolute/relative mobility perspective, following Goldthorpe (1980), is advocated. Based on this perspective a framework for cross-population analyses of mobility is developed and illustrated using well-known English/Welsh and Danish data. This framework leads to a definition of the total mobility variance in the populations under study, which may, in turn, be separated into shared and unique components of mobility variance within each of which the importance of absolute and relative mobility may be assessed. It is argued that the absolute/relative approach avoids the problems which have beset the more ambitious structure/exchange distinction and that the framework developed here permits the straightforward testing of the Lipset-Zetterberg (1959) and Featherman, Lancaster-Jones and Hauser (1975) theses.
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