ny one’s status makes mobility extremely hard.Before examining how mobility is suppressed within society, it is important to look at what types exist in our industrialized nation. Usually the amount of mobility in a society is a major indicator of its openness. India, for example, is a very closed society, running on a caste system that dictates one’s status in life and prohibits any movement between classes. The US has mostly seen structural mobility, which is advancement opportunity made possible by an increase in better-paid occupations at the expense of lower-wage occupations. Since WWII, there has been a large increase in high-paying managerial and executive positions, as well as blue-collar working class jobs. Within this structural mobility, there is upper and downward mobility that can allow a person to either rise or fall in economic class. However, many other elements come into play, making advancements extremely difficult, and class lines deeply imbedded. In our society, as well as every other industrialized nation, mobility is based on the idea that the poor are the lowest of the social strata, and that all mobility continues upwards from that point. Due to this concept, society makes progress for the lower classes particularly difficult, because they guarantee the status of those who are not poor. Herbert Gans examines this concept in his piece, “The Positive Functions of Poverty”. He gives numerous examples of how the poor see no mobility because they are kept down to benefit the upper classes. Gans also observes that the poor actually contribute to the upper mobility of the non-poor. In fact, many are able to make money off of the poor for their own social gain by providing them with retail, entertainment, gambling, housing, and narcotics. (Gans, p.25) Due to meager education and the stereotypes of being incapable and lazy, the poor enable others to obtain the better jobs. These ster...
