CLASS Reproduction and RE-Formation during Young People’S Education to Employment Transitions in South and EAST Mediterranean Countries

This paper uses evidence from nationally representative samples of approximately 2000 15-29 year olds in five South and East Mediterranean countries, focusing on those aged 25-29 who had nearly all completed their education. It analyses the job characteristics of those in employment and identifies four main employment classes. Just two of these, a business class and a salariat, are found to have survived since the samples’ parents’ careers were constructed. These advantaged classes alone are found to possess the demographic coherence – likelihood of the individuals remaining in their classes, distinctive life chances of children born into these classes, and characteristic biographies of those who reach these class destinations – to acquire common socio-cultural features and political proclivities. While sometimes acting as a channel for social mobility, education is also found to screen and render opaque the extent and processes whereby class advantages are transmitted inter-generationally.