Social Mobility through Education : ”I’Ll Succeed Although I Go Against the Odds a Bit By Having Uneducated Parents.”

This paper explores conditions for upward social mobility through education, by presenting a selection
of expected results emerging from sequential life stories told by 13 academical successful youths
whose parents have completed no higher than an upper secondary degree. As a part of a monographic
PhD thesis with expected dissertation during 2026, those 13 youths have been interviewed once a
year, three times each (except for one boy who implicitly decided to discontinue his participation after
the first interview). All first interviews were held while the participants were in upper secondary
school. The two youngest participants will be interviewed a fourth time during 2024 so that all
interviewees will have experience of higher education or other activities after graduating from upper
secondary school.
The aim of the study is to gain knowledge of why individuals who are statistically less likely – based on
their parents’ educational background – to attain higher education, have academic success and aim
for higher education. The selection of these youths as participants was made by handing out
questionnaires to students attaining upper education programs having particularly high average
admission scores. The research question is:
What enables academic success and aims för higher education amongst
youths whose parents have no higher than an upper secondary degree?
An overview of the tentative results provides a complex picture of sources of motivation between the
interviewees as well as within the story/stories told by one and the same interviewee. Commonly
occurring sources of motivation are: an economically stable future; caring for the mother in the future;
having a dream/ a strong interest; to make one’s parent(s) proud; one’s own endowments; the
influence or encourage from a teacher; norms provided by siblings or friends; expectations and; to
escape an undesired life situation.