ABSTRACT
When in a person’s life does upward social mobility begin? We know from sociological research that people experience the trials and triumphs of mobility at life-stages of adaptation to new contexts, such as school, university, and work. But this chapter is about looking further back. It considers twenty-nine life-narratives of upwardly mobile Australians, demonstrating how the origins of social mobility, and its disruptions, emerge within early experiences of working-class family life. This points to the often overlooked heterogeneous nature of working-class families, and to the early inceptions of a cleft, or divided habitus. The interviewees offered narratives of appreciation and symbolic inheritance from their families, but they also spoke of the darker side of mobility; of emotional distancing and relational separation, of painful conflict, and of ambivalence about themselves and their families. The discussion in this chapter necessarily oscillates between the hopeful benefits and the painful costs of mobility. These are people who simultaneously win and lose, and whose narratives challenge expedient political discourses on increasing social mobility for addressing inequality (see Introduction chapter), and ask that we take into account the ‘cruelty of social mobility’ (Chapter 11).
