This article discusses the way upward social mobility is subjectively experienced by Dalits in India. It proposes a phenomenological analysis of upward social mobility, looking particularly at the way in which upwardly mobile persons deal with the tension between their group of origin and their new group. The main argument is that a moral imperative to ‘pay back to society’ structures the experience of a sharp change in class and status. The specificity of the experience of upward social mobility in the Indian context seems to be that it is not characterised by a tendency to forget the group of origin in order to better acculturate to the new group, nor is it characterised by feelings of ‘being ashamed’ of the group of origin, and even less by a sentiment of ‘guilt’ about abandoning this group. On the contrary, the perpetuation of a link with the group of origin (i.e., the caste group) seems to completely shape the experience of mobility. After showing that the basis of this particular ethos of mobility is caste, the article ends with a discussion of the way in which caste renders it difficult to define social mobility in the Indian context.
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