Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement last month that a Labour government would replace social mobility with social justice as a policy benchmark raised more than a few eyebrows. It goes against received wisdom and bipartisan consensus that social mobility is a good thing. But Corbyn is right to insist that singling out the lucky few leaves the structures of inequality intact, and he is right to place the emphasis on further-reaching motions, such as revamping the education system, to achieve social justice. However, the real problem with social mobility is not that it doesn’t go far enough in making society more just for everyone. It has, in fact, the very opposite effect – deepening and perpetuating social injustice.
Public discourse and media narratives are always reminding us that society is dynamic. No one stands still. Everyone is climbing up or down ladders, going from rags to riches and vice versa. Social mobility serves as both a promise and a threat: if we play our cards right we will accrue status and wealth, but we also stand to lose everything if we don’t.
Playing our cards right means committing time and money to education, training and social circles in that hope that they might help us secure better jobs. It means investing in property and financial products that might generate future capital or taking out pension and insurance policies for our long-term security. The idea of social mobility casts each of us as one among a multitude of individuals jockeying for positions that give us a better chance of seizing scarce material resources before others beat us to them.
