Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:26:22.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Politics and Society in Latin America

Costly Opportunities

Social Mobility in Segregated Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2024

María José Álvarez-Rivadulla
María José Álvarez-Rivadulla
Affiliation:
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia

Summary

This Element investigates entrenched inequality in Latin America through a unique case of class integration in Colombian higher education. Examining a forgivable loan program benefiting 40,000 high-achieving individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, the Element introduces 'gate opening' and 'diversified networks' as mechanisms countering traditional inequality reproduction. Utilizing a longitudinal, ethnographic approach, it explores the evolving process of social mobility within an elite school, emphasizing subjective experiences and challenges. Despite educational gaps and stark social differences, most students formed cross-class friendships, completed their education, and achieved higher socioeconomic positions. Yet, in so doing they had to face several costs of social mobility resourcing to strategies such as camouflaging or disclosing, sometimes becoming culturally omnivourous in the end. The significance of a prestigious degree varies based on the professional labor market, with first-generation students facing more challenges in low quality or elitist markets where cultural and social capital act as entry barriers.
Get access

Keywords

social capitalsocial mobilitysocial classinequalitysegregation
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Politics and Society in Latin America
Online ISBN: 9781009503242
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 30 May 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrahams, J., & Ingram, N. (2013). The chameleon habitus: Exploring local students’ negotiations of multiple fields. Sociological Research Online, 18(4), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adrianzén, M. A., Chevez, H. F., Morales, W. N., Quevedo, V., & Chiyón, S. V. (2019). Study-group diversity and early college academic outcomes: Experimental evidence from a higher education inclusion program in Peru. Economics of Education Review, 72, 131–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice: Addison.Google Scholar
Álvarez-Rivadulla, M. J. (2017, 06/07/2017). Ser Pilo Paga y la desigualdad en Colombia. Red de la Educación. La Silla Vacía. Retrieved from https://lasillavacia.com/silla-llena/red-de-la-educacion/historia/ser-pilo-paga-y-la-desigualdad-en-colombia-61289Google Scholar
Álvarez-Rivadulla, M. J. (2023). Clases medias en Bogotá y Montevideo. In Assusa, G. & Benza, G. (Eds.), Producción y reproducción social de las desigualdades en la América Latina actual. Nuevas tendencias, disputas e identidades. Buenos Aires/México: CLACSO-Siglo XXI Editores. CLACSO.Google Scholar
Álvarez-Rivadulla, M. J., Castro, C., Corredor, J., et al. (2017). El Programa Ser Pilo Paga: Impactos iniciales en equidad en el acceso a la educación superior y el desempeño académico. Retrieved from. https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/server/api/core/bitstreams/149fbc01-ada9-4e56-9099-cd339a4a3219/contentGoogle Scholar
Álvarez-Rivadulla, M. J., Jaramillo, A. M., Fajardo, F., Cely, L., Molano, A., & Montes, F. (2022). College integration and social class. Higher Education, 84(3)–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angulo, R., Gaviria, A., Páez, G. N., & Azevedo, J. P. (2012). Movilidad social en Colombia. Retrieved from https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/server/api/core/bitstreams/560b81e2-6d2b-46b2-930e-318190583137/contentGoogle Scholar
Aries, E. (2008). Race and Class Matters at an Elite College: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Aries, E., & Seider, M. (2005). The interactive relationship between class identity and the college experience: The case of lower income students. Qualitative Sociology, 28(4), 419–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armstrong, E. A., & Hamilton, L. T. (2013). Paying for the Party: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badel, A., & Peña, X. (2010) “Descomponiendo la brecha salarial de género con ajuste de sesgo de selección: el caso colombiano.” Revista de análisis económico, 25.2 (2010), 169–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrera-Osorio, F., & Bayona-Rodríguez, H. (2019). Signaling or better human capital: Evidence from Colombia. Economics of Education Review, 70, 20–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bathmaker, A.-M., Ingram, N., Abrahams, J., et al. (2016). Higher Education, Social Class and Social Mobility: The Degree Generation: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrman, J. R., Gaviria, A., Székely, M., Birdsall, N., & Galiani, S. (2001). Intergenerational mobility in Latin America. Economia, 2(1), 1–44.Google Scholar
Beller, E., & Hout, M. (2006). Welfare states and social mobility: How educational and social policy may affect cross-national differences in the association between occupational origins and destinations. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 24(4), 353–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benza, G., & Kessler, G. (2020). Uneven Trajectories: Latin American Societies in the Twenty-First Century: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Billingham, S. (2018). Access to Success and Social Mobility through Higher Education: A Curate’s Egg?: Emerald Group.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blee, K. M., & Currier, A. (2011). Ethics beyond the IRB: An introductory essay. Qualitative Sociology, 34, 401–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (2018). The forms of capital. In: The Sociology of Economic Life, Routledge, pp. 78–92.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1998). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (2007). Sketch for a Self-analysis, The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chan, T. W. (2018). Social mobility and the well-being of individuals. The British Journal of Sociology, 69(1), 183–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2020). Income segregation and intergenerational mobility across colleges in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 135(3): 1567–1633.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetty, R., Jackson, M. O., Kuchler, T., et al. (2022). Social capital I: Measurement and associations with economic mobility. Nature, 608(7921), 108–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corredor, J., and Álvarez Rivadulla, M.J. (2024). The elephant in the (class) room: Cultural capital as personal differences and college segregation [Manuscript submitted for publication]Google Scholar
Corredor, J., Álvarez-Rivadulla, M. J., & Maldonado-Carreño, C. (2020a). Good will hunting: Social integration of students receiving forgivable loans for college education in contexts of high inequality. Studies in Higher Education, 45(8)1664–1678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corredor, J., González-Arango, F., & Maldonado-Carreño, C. (2020b). When unintended effects are really unintended: Depressive symptoms and other psychological effects of forgivable loan programs for college education. Higher Education, 80(4):645–662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cotler, J. (2016). Educación superior e inclusión social: Un estudio cualitativo de los becarios del programa Beca 18: Ministerio de Educación.Google Scholar
Crozier, G., Reay, D., & Clayton, J. (2019). Working the Borderlands: Working-class students constructing hybrid identities and asserting their place in higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(7), 922–937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Díaz Vargas, L. M. (2013). De aquí a mañana: Expectativas a futuro en jóvenes de la Comuna IV de Soacha.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, B. (2020). Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class: Hachette UK.Google Scholar
Espinoza, Ó. , & González, L. E. (2016). La educación superior en Chile y la compleja transición desde el régimen de autofinanciamiento hacia el régimen de gratuidad. Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Comparada: RELEC, 7(10), 35–51.Google Scholar
Ferguson, S., & Lareau, A. (2018). First-generation College Students in Elite Setting: Patterns of Cultural Exclusion. Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania. Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Ferreyra, M. M., Avitabile, C., & Paz, F. H. (2017). At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean: World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, S. (2012). Cultural omnivores or culturally homeless? Exploring the shifting cultural identities of the upwardly mobile. Poetics, 40(5), 467–489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, S. (2014). The price of the ticket: Rethinking the experience of social mobility. Sociology, 48(2), 352–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, S. (2016). Habitus clivé and the emotional imprint of social mobility. The Sociological Review, 64(1), 129–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, S., & Laurison, D. (2019). The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged: Policy Press.Google Scholar
García Villegas, Mauricio, and López, Laura Quiroz. (2011). Apartheid educativo: educación, desigualdad e inmovilidad social en Bogotá. Revista de Economía Institucional 13(25): 137–162.Google Scholar
García-Villegas, M., & López, L. Q. (2011). Apartheid educativo. Educación, desigualdad e inmovilidad social en Bogotá. Revista de Economía Institucional, 13(25).Google Scholar
García, S., Rodríguez, C., Sánchez, F., & Bedoya, J. G. (2015). La lotería de la cuna: La movilidad social a través de la educación en los municipios de Colombia. Retrieved from https://repositorio.uniandes.edu.co/server/api/core/bitstreams/1fdc7134-c57c-4d03-a4f0-9268b9c7d377/contentGoogle Scholar
García-Villegas, M., Cárdenas, J. C., & Fergusson, L. (2021). La quinta puerta: Ariel Colombia.Google Scholar
Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2009). The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granfield, R. (1991). Making it by faking it: Working-class students in an elite academic environment. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 20(3), 331–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, M. S. (1977). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 347–367.Google Scholar
Gray, B., & Kish-Gephart, J. J. (2013). Encountering social class differences at work: How “class work” perpetuates inequality. Academy of Management Review, 38(4), 670–699.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertz, T., Jayasundera, T., Piraino, P., Selcuk, S., Smith, N., & Verashchagina, A. (2007). The inheritance of educational inequality: International comparisons and fifty-year trends. The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 7(2):1–30.Google Scholar
Ingram, N., Bathmaker, A.-M., Abrahams, J., et al. (2023). The Degree Generation: The Making of Unequal Graduate Lives: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Jack, A. A. (2016). (No) harm in asking: Class, acquired cultural capital, and academic engagement at an elite university. Sociology of Education, 89(1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jack, A. A. (2019). The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaztman, R. (2001). Seducidos y abandonados: El aislamiento social de los pobres urbanos. Revista de la Cepal 75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaztman, R. (2023). [Comunicación Personal].Google Scholar
Kaztman, R., & Retamoso, A. (2007). Efectos de la segregación urbana sobre la educación en Montevideo. Revista de la CEpal, 91(133): 133–153.Google Scholar
Khan, S. (2011). Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life: Univ of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lareau, A. (2015). Cultural knowledge and social inequality. American Sociological Review, 80(1), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E. M. (2016). Class and Campus Life: Managing and Experiencing Inequality at an Elite College: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E. M., & Harris, J. (2020). Counterspaces, Counterstructures: Low-income, First-generation, and Working-class Students’ Peer Support at Selective Colleges 1. Paper presented at the Sociological Forum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, E. M., & Kramer, R. (2013). Out with the old, in with the new? Habitus and social mobility at selective colleges. Sociology of Education, 86(1), 18–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, W. (2014). Habitus transformation and hidden injuries: Successful working-class university students. Sociology of Education, 87(1), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Londoño-Vélez, J. (2011). Movilidad social, preferencias redistributivas y felicidad en Colombia. Desarrollo y Sociedad, 68, 171–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Londoño-Vélez, J., Rodríguez, C., & Sánchez, F. (2020). Upstream and downstream impacts of college merit-based financial aid for low-income students: Ser Pilo Paga in Colombia. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 12(2), 193–227.Google Scholar
Londoño-Vélez, J., Rodríguez, C., Sánchez, F., & Álvarez, L. E. (2023). Financial Aid and Social Mobility: Evidence From Colombia’s Ser Pilo Paga (No. w31737). National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31737/w31737.pdfCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manzoni, A., & Streib, J. (2019). The equalizing power of a college degree for first-generation college students: Disparities across institutions, majors, and achievement levels. Research in Higher Education, 60(5), 577–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medina, Pablo, Ariza, Natalia, Navas, Pablo, Rojas, Fernando, Parody, Gina, Valdivia, Juan Alejandro et al. (2018). An unintended effect of financing the university education of the most brilliant and poorest Colombian students: The case of the intervention of the Ser Pilo Paga program. Complexity, 2018: 1–9.Google Scholar
Méndez, M. L., & Gayo, M. (2018). Upper Middle Class Social Reproduction: Wealth, Schooling, and Residential Choice in Chile: Springer.Google Scholar
Morton, J. M. (2019). Moving up without losing your way. Moving Up without Losing Your Way: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Neal, J. W. (2010). Hanging out: Features of urban children’s peer social networks. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 27(7), 982–1000.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinzón Flechas, P.C., & Álvarez Rivadulla, M. J. (2023). “Los beneficiarios de ser pilo paga en el mercado laboral: experiencias de movilidad social, incertidumbre y recursividad.” Análisis Político, 36(107): 53–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quacquarelli-Symonds, . (2022). QS World University Rankings. Retrieved from https://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankingsGoogle Scholar
Reay, D. (2000). A useful extension of Bourdieu’s conceptual framework?: Emotional capital as a way of understanding mothers’ involvement in their children’s education? The Sociological Review, 48(4), 568–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reay, D. (2005). Beyond consciousness? The psychic landscape of social class. Sociology, 39(5), 911–928.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reay, D., Crozier, G., & Clayton, J. (2009). “Strangers in paradise”? Working-class students in elite universities. Sociology, 43(6), 1103–1121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivera, L. A. (2016). Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, S. B., Lauver, K., Le, H., Davis, D., Langley, R., & Carlstrom, A. (2004). Do psychosocial and study skill factors predict college outcomes? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 130(2), 261.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rodríguez Anaiz, P. C. (2023). Segregated Inclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Working-class Women’s Experiences at an Elite University: UCL (University College London).Google Scholar
Rodríguez, P., & Archer, L. (2022). Reproducing privilege through whiteness and beauty: An intersectional analysis of elite Chilean university students’ practices. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43(5), 804–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royster, D. (2003). Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-collar Jobs: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, M., Evans, O., & Wilkinson, R. B. (2016). A longitudinal study of the relations among university students’ subjective social status, social contact with university friends, and mental health and well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 35(9), 722–737.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saraví, G. (2015). Juventudes Fragmentadas: CIESAS.Google Scholar
Scott, J., & Marshall, G. (2009). Cultural Capital: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sennett, R., & Cobb, J. (1972). The Hidden Injuries of Class: Vintage.Google Scholar
Sherman, R. (2017). Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
SNIES. (2021). Sistema Nacional de Información de la Educación Superior: Ministerio de Educación Nacional.Google Scholar
Streib, J. (2017). The unbalanced theoretical toolkit: Problems and partial solutions to studying culture and reproduction but not culture and mobility. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 5(1), 127–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuber, J. M. (2011). Inside the College Gates: How Class and Culture Matter in Higher Education: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Telles, E. (2014). Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America: UNC Press Books.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1998). Durable Inequality: University of California.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torche, F. (2011). Is a college degree still the great equalizer? Intergenerational mobility across levels of schooling in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 117(3), 763–807.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torche, F. (2014). Intergenerational mobility and inequality: The Latin American case. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 619–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uribe Mallarino, C., & Pardo Perez, C. (2006). La ciudad vivida: Movilidad espacial y representaciones sobre la estratificación social en Bogotá. Universitas Humanistica, 62, 169–203. Retrieved from http://www.javeriana.edu.co/Facultades/C_Sociales/universitas/62/uribe.pdfGoogle Scholar
Urrea, F., Viáfara, C., & Viveros, M. (2014). From whitened miscegenation to tri-ethnic multiculturalism. Race and ethnicity in Colombia. Pigmentocracies. Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America: The University of North Carolina Press, 81–125.Google Scholar
Valente, R. R., & Berry, B. J. (2017). Performance of students admitted through affirmative action in Brazil. Latin American Research Review, 52(1), 18–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viáfara López, C. A. (2017). Movilidad social intergeneracional de acuerdo al color de la piel en Colombia. Sociedad y Economía, 33, 263–287.Google Scholar
Vigoya, M. V., & Hernández, F. G. (2010). Género y generación en las experiencias de ascenso social de personas negras en Bogotá. Maguaré, 24, 99–130.Google Scholar
Viveros Vigoya, M. (2022). El oxímoron de las clases medias negras: Movilidad social e interseccionalidad en Colombia: Bielefeld University Press.Google Scholar
World Bank (2021). World Bank, Poverty and Inequality Platform. The World Bank Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINIGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, V. (2012). How I became a relational economic sociologist and what does that mean? Politics & Society, 40(2), 145–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, V., & Gaydosh, L. (2019, 01/09/2019). Class on campus. Princeton Alumni Weekly. Retrieved from https://paw.princeton.edu/article/essay-class-campusGoogle Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Costly Opportunities
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Costly Opportunities
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Costly Opportunities
Available formats
×