The movement of class: on occupation and everyday mobility patterns in the United States

TL;DR

This paper explores how job types in the U.S. influence people's daily movement patterns using cell phone data.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel link between occupational class and everyday mobility patterns using modern data sources.

Findings

Occupational class strongly predicts mobility patterns in the U.S.

Some occupations are disproportionately exposed to impoverished neighborhoods.

Unexpected mobility patterns are associated with certain occupations.

Abstract

For much of the last century, class analysis has been a major area of sociology and has provided a critical lens through which scholars analyze social stratification. The attributes of certain class positions are of particular sociological interest given their impact on stratification and the possibility of greater inter- and intra-generational mobility. In this work, I explore one perspective of class analysis that has been neglected in the literature: everyday mobility patterns. As a result of the rising availability of rich cell phone data, everyday mobility patterns have become a popular data source for social science research. However, despite the clear theoretical relationship between everyday mobility patterns and class, little sociological research has connected these two concepts. The analysis, set in the United States, indicates that class—specifically, occupational class—is an extremely strong predictor of mobility patterns and that not all occupations are associated with the mobility patterns one might expect. The findings also indicate that certain occupations are disproportionally exposed to impoverished neighborhoods, and I thus theorize about the occupational attributes that matter most for everyday mobility patterns. I conclude by arguing that novel data sources have the potential to renew interest in class analysis.

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