Examples Of Class Mobility

Superior Essays
“It’s really hard to explain, and I honestly have no idea”, said my guardian, Don. It was a rainy December, and we were sitting in the living room and I asked him why, despite our economic growth, financial disparities exist. Why are there so much homeless? Did the generations before us experience the same thing? Here we are now, months later and I am interviewing about almost the exact same thing. I believe that social classes have changed throughout generations, but they are not heading the right way. In this essay, I am going to explain class mobility in general, but also in an intergenerational context, using Don’s story. I will use the concepts of meritocracy, structural and individual explanation, the concentration of wealth, socioeconomic status to analyze Don”s class mobility. My guardian’s family itself went from poverty to upper-middle class, which is a perfect example of class mobility because they went from one class to another. …show more content…
In my country, Senegal, there is a strong belief in meritocracy: your class mobility depends on how hard you work for it. Don’s dad was a small business owner who worked his way up and became a millionaire, which is quite unusual. Senegal is a very low-income country, and his case was one of very few. His small business became a big one in my country and what’s interesting is, his education stopped in middle school. A structural explanation to that would be the fact that education was not too important in Senegal at that time and people believed that a workplace is a right location for a man. Also, a good education is expensive. So instead of spending money on an education for him, why not let him drop out and work so that he can be a source of income ? On the other hand, an individual explanation would be that he was surrounded by people who were always working, and that influenced him to drop out. Or, he just didn’t like school at all. Growing up in that transition inspired my guardian. He said, “ Seeing my dad work day and night, every single day, inspired a lot of steps that I’ve taken in my life”. Even though he was pretty comfortable, Don had to start from the bottom himself when he moved to the United States. As I pointed it out in my introduction, not a lot has changed in the college system, except for higher tuition and fees. Students have to face the same mundane jobs and take out loans in order to survive. Basically, you have to suffer in order to get a higher education and participate in your country’s development. The transition from being taken care of to having to take care of yourself is really harsh in American in comparison to Senegal, where parents do everything for you. Young people don’t get jobs in high school just because it’s the culture, parents don’t let their kids work. In America, you are taught independence at a really early age, and that’s not the case in Senegal . So coming here means Don’s socio-economic status, which is his social standing, drastically changed. Without speaking English, he had to get a job immediately to survive. He first worked as a store clerk, then got a second job as a security guard. He held both of those jobs while still having a full-time schedule in the college of Engineering in New York. Most of the jobs he was working did not have flexible schedules and he had to take loans for school. When I asked if he liked those jobs, he said, “ Not really, but I had to do hold on to them to support myself and get an education that will allow me to be richer”. Getting education helps you prosper, but it really leaves you with a lot of debts. For example, even though he moved up to a higher class, he is still paying his loans, on top of having two kids and a wife to care for. I am pretty sure he would find it nice not having to pay debts. In this case, I would say that there is mobility across generation, but it includes a country other than the United States. Don’s dad grew up in poverty and without education but is a millionaire

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