Abstract
Studies of social mobility, in common with sociology in general, should reflect the parameters and concerns of the societies in which they are based. Hence, issues such as the ‘equality of opportunity’ debate, the role played by fundamental changes in political regimes at the end of the Second World War and at the demise of the socialist regimes in eastern Europe, and the effects of high rates of immigration have been built into the basic designs of national mobility studies. This article was sparked by the realisation that rates of unemployment in Northern Ireland, and in the western world generally, rose in the 1980s to levels not experienced since the 1930s. At the time of fieldwork for the Irish mobility study in late 1973/early 1974, male unemployment in Northern Ireland stood at approximately seven percent and was falling (Government of Northern Ireland 1976). By the mid-1980s, however, over twenty-six per cent of male employees in Northern Ireland were claiming unemployment benefit (Department of Economic Development 1984) and the percentage of those claiming benefit was rising.