"Upward social mobility should not be a phenomenon for a restricted group of people"

Why do you think geographical mobility in Europe is still low?

Despite the progress made with the creation of the European Union, in Europe there are still cultural, institutional and language barriers which make moving between countries more burdensome. In fact, sometimes even within countries where there are no language barriers geographical mobility is low due to cultural differences (e.g. between the North and South of Italy).

Why do you think geographical mobility in the United States of America is high? Does this have to do with their educational system? Or the fact that they speak only English and does moving to another state would not mean that the person moving would have to learn a new language? Or could the constant reminder of living ‘the American dream’ affect people’s decision to move around?

I believe the high geographical mobility of the USA is mainly cultural and it is grounded in its history since first settlement. If you look at the four Western countries that originated from UK colonization (USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), they all exhibit high internal migration rates. The common language also facilitates internal movements, even though if we compare the USA to the UK, the UK does not have anywhere near the internal mobility of the USA. As far as the educational system is concerned, although I do not think it hampers internal migration, I do not believe that it is responsible for higher migration rates and it does not play any different role than, say, the UK system or the systems in other European countries.

What could we do in Europe to promote social mobility? Could we learn something from the USA?

The USA provides some useful lessons for Europe. Historically, the USA had a more open education system and more educational opportunities across classes which encouraged upward social mobility. Even at tertiary education level since the late 1980s, when the costs of some institutions became increasingly prohibitive for lower socio-economic classes, there remain plenty of opportunities in alternative institutions and grants are, in many cases, quite generous. Moreover, the USA has a very ‘entrepreneurial’ culture which creates opportunities at lower classes as illustrated by the great success across multiple immigration waves. Poor Irish or Italian immigration waves of the 19th and early 20th Century led to successes, much as Asian immigration waves of the latter 20th Century.

Would you say that the current economic crisis has a negative effect on social mobility?

The current economic crisis will certainly pose some challenges to upward social mobility especially in the short term. Many European countries are currently undergoing public expenditures reviews which will result in severe public expenditures cuts. This is likely to have negative implications for social mobility. Take the case of the UK, for instance, the current expenditures review calls for a very substantial budget cut for tertiary education and allows higher education institutions to charge ‘market-price’ fees removing the current cap. Despite the promise of introducing grants for students coming from lower socio-economic class I believe this new system will severely penalise them. However, in the long run some new opportunities might arise which might facilitate upward social mobility. The economic crisis, while producing a plethora of negative effects, does have the advantage of cutting some ‘dead branches’ of the economy creating new chances for highly entrepreneurial people. Entirely new businesses and new sectors of the economy will open up and allow an entirely different group of people to benefit from it.

Geographical mobility and education go hand in hand in upward social mobility. People living in areas with a high concentration of social deprivation or poor access to transport reinforce the socio-economic disadvantage. Would implying a quota in schools make a difference (for example, obliging schools to accept x amount of students from each neighborhood within the city or ethnic background)?

I think that encouraging schools to reach for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or minority groups is a good idea, but the imposition of quotas can be risky and somehow counter-productive if this means accepting students who do not have the appropriate entry qualifications. Rather than the use of quotas, which are not a very ‘flexible’ approach, I believe in the use of merit-based grants specifically targeted at students from lower socio-economic classes. These grants allow more economically disadvantages students to access more prestigious schools while making sure that they will succeed in their studies and not fall behind.

It has been suggested (and partly decided) in Holland to raise tuition fees for university master education. This could result in lesser students applying for a master education, as tuition fees have more than doubled. Do you think that such changes could affect social mobility? If so, what do you think the impact could be?

Doubling the fees will certainly have an impact on participation and it is likely to affect students coming from lower socio-economic classes disproportionally more than better-off students. Students from more disadvantaged backgrounds not only are more financially constrained but also tend to be, on average, more risk adverse (i.e. less prone to borrow to finance their education). The extent of the impact will obviously depend on the status of the labour market and the expectations of students. In a recession, there are two opposite labour market effects. On one side, the lack of suitable jobs encourages students to invest in their education as the cost-opportunity of doing so (i.e. the lost income deriving from not working for, say, a year) is lower. On the other, the students might perceive the masters as not being a good investment (i.e. not increasing their chances of finding a higher paid job to compensate for the extra costs). This second effect might be stronger for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, for which funding education is comparatively more difficult.