In their different ways, the three major mobility studies discussed in the previous chapter all struggled with incorporating the idea of social change overtime. They were not alone. Despite an interest in whether mobility rates were rising or falling, comparisons were complicated by the fact that mobility tables for different times (and different societies) had varying proportions in both the origin and the destination categories. Rather than treating these structural differences as important, most analysts used statistical techniques to discount these variations as ‘noise in the system’ (for example, Bibby 1975) in order to concentrate on the ‘real’ mobility going on, ‘independently’ of the changing distributions of classes or jobs.

Mobility analysis should have taken more, and more careful, account of social change for two reasons. First, historical industrial and occupational transformation in a demographic sense – that is, the size and composition of industrial sectors and occupational groupings – are connected to class mobility. If mobility is measured as movements between groupings of occupations, mobility and occupations are by definition connected (even when the categorisation into groupings is informed by theories of social class). This is one way of beginning to rectify the shortcomings of earlier research frameworks. Second, even if the underlying mobility processes – differentials in access to education, recruitment practices and so on – change relatively little, the flows of people must necessarily change to fill new opportunities (in an expanding middle class) or to reduce the flow into industries and occupations that are beginning to disappear (in a contracting working class). This fact of mobility is every bit as real, and requires just as much explanation, as any other kind of mobility. It is therefore important that the evolution of labour markets and occupational groupings, the playing fields on which the mobility game is played out, are explored as part of mobility regimes.

However, ‘occupational groupings’ are not as obvious as it first seems. Cannadine (1998) points to early uses of ‘social class’ to mean the collective interests of industries (for example, ‘the farming interest’) rather than the types of workers (farmers; agricultural labourers). 19th century Census classifications confused industrial output (what is produced) with types of occupations (the work tasks people do).