Session Information
Contribution
Description: A major theme of the sociology of education in the UK and elsewhere has been the intergenerational transmission of socio-economic status, principally expressed in terms of the relationship between the occupational destinations of parents and their adult children. These patterns of continuity are well-established in the UK. During the second half of the 20th Century there was a considerable upward shift in occupational status with a much higher proportion of the population working in professional and managerial occupations. But, at the same time as this movement in absolute mobility, the relative mobility of people from different occupational origins remained largely unchanged (Halsey, Heath and Ridge, 1980). However, while these patterns of differential outcomes are well documented, the processes which give rise to them are less well understood. In particular, the process of choices about occupational destinations have received much less attention. Seeing occupational destinations in terms of choice, albeit choice which may be constrained by circumstance, is partly influenced by theorists such as Beck (2001) who are moving away from heavily structuralist explanations to a focus of life patterns as an individual project.
Addressing these issues requires a consideration of the occupational choices made by young people and how these relate to the socio-economic circumstances of their families, their gender and a variety of other factors. Research has shown the importance of the family context and, in particular to family behaviour as well as families' structural characteristics to understanding educational and employment outcomes for young people (Croll, 1994). It has also shown how, despite the relatively predictable outcomes for many young people they still typically have a strong sense of personal agency (Ball, Maguire and MacCrea, 2000). The paper will analyse the occupational choices of young people, looking at variations connected to gender and the occupations and socio-economic situation of their families. It will also relate these to attitudinal and behavioural characteristics of the young people and the degree of alignment between their educational and educational aspirations.
Methodology: The data presented here come from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), a major research resource in which a representative sample of the same 10,000 people have been interviewed annually since 1991. Since 1994 approximately 770 young people aged 11-15 living in sample households have also been interviewed. The BHPS makes possible a unique longitudinal and inter-generational analysis which can: a) consider individual patterns of continuity and change in young people's responses and educational outcomes; and b) relate information about the young people to information about their families. This means that patterns of occupational choice can be related to a variety of other characteristics of young people and to changes in these over time, including educational and employment outcomes.
Conclusions: The results will make it possible to explore the degree of continuity and discontinuity between the occupations of parents and the occupational aspirations of their children. It will show how far aspirations are matched to outcomes post-16 and the alignment between occupational and educational intentions. Differences in these processes between males and females and between young people from different backgrounds will be investigated. The research will contribute to an understanding of inter-generational transmission of patterns of inequality. It will also explore the way that young people's individual afency can be understood in the context of structural influences on inequality.
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