Uses qualitative techniques - such as life stories and family case studies - to examine the dynamics of mobility and address fundamental sociological questions. This book employs the case-study approach which allows the analysis of collective processes through their local effects, restoring the links with classics of sociological thought.

Introduction; 2: Women, Men, and Transgenerational Family Influences in Social Mobility; 3: Heritage and its Lineage: A Case History of Transmission and Social Mobility over Five Generations; 4: Shadow and Reality in Occupational History: Britain in the First Half of the Twentieth Century; 5: The Familial Meaning of Housing in Social Rootedness and Mobility: Britain and France; 6: The Local World View: Social Change and Memory in Three Tuscan Communes; 7: Migration, Mobility, and Social Process: Scottish Migrants in Canada; 8: Transmission in Extreme Situations: Russian Families Expropriated by the October Revolution; 9: Social Mobility in Hungary since the Second World War: Interpretations through Surveys and through Family Histories; 10: Social Mobility and the Survey Method: A Critical Analysis