By researching the movement of second career individuals into teaching I challenged the conceptual usefulness of ‘social-class mobility’ and ‘tourism’ and instead argue the term migration is more appropriate mechanism when identifying social processes. Mobility implies free movement in any direction both up and down.
Indeed the word mobility implies a form of movement that is open to one and all either in its relative or absolute term. More importantly the idea of mobility ignores the various obstacles people face on these social journeys. For any migratory movement involves crossing graduated processes, barriers and procedures of change rather than the spontaneous agency implicit surrounding the language of mobility.
Therefore the migrant is someone who consciously undertakes an arduous social journey in order to move from one occupation to another. For example a woman employed in a traditionally male occupation, or an older person seeking employment or the working-class person taking up a middle-class occupation like teaching. All these people experience corrosive patterns of prejudice, fear and discrimination, in the same way an ethnic minority experiences prejudice coming into the UK.
This perspective isn’t undermining the centuries of horrendous experiences black people have had at the hands of white people. Instead it’s arguing that the vast majority of us experience the horror of prejudice, and so we have more things in common with each other, than differences.
Until we recognise our similarities we won’t see the barriers we erect that prevent equal socio-economic opportunities, socio-cultural mixing and the ability to engage everyone in civic participation and belonging. You only have to recognise how alienated white working-class males are in the UK to see that prejudice alienates everyone. Once people’s eyes are opened to the alienation caused by the prejudice then we’ll collectively be able to point the finger at those people who do terrorise us without being called racist.
