Achievement Careers in Switzerland

Upward social mobility is considered as a concrete, therefore particularly salient expression of the liberal utopia of a capitalistic overcoming of class structure. Also in Swiss sociology the study of social mobility was during a long period the monopoly of quantitative approaches. Therefore questions concerning the sequentiality, action theoretical bases and the biographical context of subjective representations faded in the background. In this paper, based on biographical interviews, the achievement careers of engineers and business economists are reconstructed. Career phases, career anchors and career mechanisms are analysed and discussed in a comparative perspective. Adapted from the source document.