Educational Upward Mobility

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 1-2

3. Research Literature on Educational Upward Mobility

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 3-28

4. Theoretical Perspective

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 29-41

5. Study Methodology

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 42-55

6. Social Contexts Enabling Educational Upward Mobility

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 56-164

7. Summary and Conclusions

   • Antonia Kupfer

   Pages 165-167

8. Back Matter

   Pages 168-184

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What enables the few working-class people who enter higher education to achieve against the odds? This book offers answers by comparing social contexts, educational institutions and policies in Austria and England to demonstrate a surprising number of similarities behind those who succeed using Bourdieu's concept of habitus.

• Social mobility
• Social inequality
• Working-class education
• Gender in education
• Higher education
• Vocational education
• Bourdieu
• Habitus
• Biographical narrative interviews
• Austria
• England
• education
• higher education
• Institution
• methodology
• mobility
• Pierre Bourdieu
• social change

“Educational Upward Mobility by Antonia Kupfer is a thought provoking monograph of international comparative research. … Kupfer’s scholarship examines the structural dimensions which inform how working-class people become aspirational. … essential reading for scholars interested in social mobility and the formation of aspirations.” (Garth Stahl, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 65 (1), 2017)

Antonia Kupfer is Professor of Macrosociology at the Technical University Dresden, Germany.

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