Career Processes in Great Britain and the United States

Previous research suggests that British and American systems of social mobility are organized around different traditions and principles that produce similar mobility outcomes. In this paper we explore the implications of Turner's distinction between sponsored and contest educational systems for the process of occupational career mobility in Great Britain and the United States. We use data on matched labor market cohorts from the Occupational Changes in a Generation Survey II and the Oxford Social Mobility Study to examine the linkage between the education system and the occupational structure in the two countries, as well as the role of “further education” in the career process of British men. The results indicate that despite substantial differences in the way in which education and occupational credentials are obtained, the degree of openness in the two societies is about the same when one looks at occupational status ten and twenty years after labor force entry. We find, however, a notable degree of difference between the two societies in the process of career mobility. The results suggest that “sponsored” and “contest” are over- simplified labels for the differences in the career processes of British and American men.