Onwards and upwards? Migration and social mobility of the UK graduates

Ensuring equal opportunity for people from diverse backgrounds is a major political concern, and spatial aspects to this debate relate to the availability of opportunity in different regions of the UK. In particular, migration between the regions of the UK is common amongst domestic students and graduates, and has been shown to have consequences for both the region of origin and the destination. Despite the recognition that migration is not a one-off event, but an ongoing process, empirical studies rarely operationalize it in ways reflecting this continuity. This study contributes to filling the above-described gap by investigating how the patterns of graduates’ migration across their life-course relate to their intra-generational social mobility. Longitudinal data, extracted from the 1970 British Cohort Study, and sequence analysis are used to derive the typologies of these patterns. A set of logistic regressions is used to investigate the relationship between these two, simultaneous aspects of graduates’ life-courses over the long term. The findings indicate that graduates’ migration across their life-course is significantly related to their intra-generational social mobility. In particular, temporary migration safeguards the advantaged position of the most privileged, in line with the notion of a ‘glass floor’. At the same time, it can create a ‘glass ceiling’ for those on less privileged trajectories. In the light of these findings, both academics and policy-makers are encouraged to incorporate migration, both theoretically and practically, into their research approaches.