Contemporary literature has been alerting us to the fact that the ‘elevator’ of social mobility – primarily education – is working poorly at best or is broken in many countries in the Global South. Is this true? What happens when there is upward mobility? Is it always a fairy tale?
This significant book explores the ways in which de-segregation and inter-class relations do take place in fragmented and highly unequal societies, and the relevance of public policies such as Ser Pilo Paga in triggering these processes. Ser Pilo Paga is a public policy that provides funding for university fees to thousands of undergraduate students from disadvantage backgrounds to study at the most prestigious universities in Colombia. The book is based on a longitudinal ethnography of the beneficiaries of the Ser Pilo Paga policy that combines in-depth interviews with fieldwork inside and outside of campus and with survey data, among other source of information. Most notably, for years the author has been a committed professor of these amazing young people as well as of their classmates and friends, and the book offers an invaluable inside story of this programme as well as a reflexive account of the experience of both students and academics.
Costly Opportunities addresses the crucial role that family and close networks play in aspiring and sustaining such processes of upwards mobility. More generally, María José Álvarez-Rivadulla identifies two mechanisms that are key in reducing inequality and fostering social mobility: gate opening and diversifying networks. By reference to the mechanisms that Charles Tilly (Durable Inequality, 1999) regards as responsible for the reproduction of categorical inequalities (opportunity hoarding, emulation and adaptation), the book shows how gate opening (the opposite of opportunity hoarding) and diversified networks (that disrupt regular homophilic relationships) allow access to diverse resources that make social mobility possible.
As clearly supported both empirically and conceptually, one of the main theoretical contributions of the book is to discuss the notion of class relational work among students who try to find their ways into the academic system and class structure in Bogotá; in other words, the costs of making new friends, maintaining them, learning new cultural codes and reframing original ones. In this sense, Costly Opportunities, as the title suggests, investigates the costs of merging and submerging in an elite university, the difficulties in building new and diverse networks and, above all, the struggles in making friends and finding a place and identity beyond being a ‘Pilo’ (beneficiary of the Ser Pilo Paga programme). The three mechanisms of class relational work presented in the book are key to the analysis: camouflage, disclosure and omnivorousness. Networking with students from other backgrounds provides the opportunity to develop new practices of cultural capital such as leisure activities, consumption practices and means of transportation that are unknown and different. Also, making friends – especially for female students – allows students to ‘learn’ a new class aesthetic (how to dress for different occasions, for example, what to avoid, etc.). All these valuable insights help Pilos diversify their experiences and allow them to accomplish a (proper) sense of belonging to an institution. Here, the notion of cultural capital elaborated in the book is critical in order to explore how learning certain practices and manners and visiting new places have helped the students to navigate their university experience. At the same time as the Pilos develop their cultural capital they reflect the cultural content that they produce about themselves (they see and describe themselves as the ‘nerds’ or the ‘good students’) and about others from privileged backgrounds, such as gomelos (‘preppies’) or ‘aristohippies’. The argument of the book in relation to these procedures is that this bilateral understanding of cultural and symbolic capital provides insights to enable the exploration of the process of transforming shame into pride.
As stated in the book, privilege is expected to be based on merit. Here is an interesting argument: how is the friendly reception afforded to these exceptional but vulnerable students within a larger context of institutional and (upper) class cultures also a ‘gain’ for these more privileged groups, as they can claim that they are promoting tolerance and meritocracy? In other words, the most privileged already enjoy different advantages, but they might also appear as those who are actively constructing more inclusive cultures. This is interestingly different to what has been described as ‘hostile ignorance’ (just avoiding lower-class students) found in the work of Sherelle Ferguson and Annette Lareau (‘Hostile Ignorance, Class, and Same-Race Friendships: Perspectives of Working-Class College Students’, Socius, 7, 2021).
Costly Opportunities makes a substantive contribution to the field of study of the emotional costs of social mobility and the ways in which these upwards mobility aspirations are cultivated within families as well as within communities. The book, for example, shows that many of these upwardly mobile families do not raise their children by the logic of ‘natural growth’, but that there is a lot of ‘concerted cultivation’. For example, some parents had previous education or positive educational experiences and have the expectation that their daughters and sons can continue their paths and go further; or single mothers’ own mobility aspirations appear to be fundamental as their lack of opportunities encouraged a certain desire to improve their social conditions. The book also alerts the reader to the consequences of ‘giving back’ or ‘returning’ something to families, in light of the enormous efforts involved in encouraging young people to become Pilos. Indeed, some of these remarkable students – who frequently come from rural areas or the outskirts of cities – have opted to stay close to their families in order to provide economic and emotional support, at the cost of not developing trajectories beyond their communities of origin.
Becoming middle class is treated in the book by reference to the concept of ‘cleft habitus’, the social, emotional and personal sense of dislocation experienced by upwardly mobile people, in both European and Latin American contexts. However, the book conceptually and empirically addresses apparent differences at the core of this literature: the difficult and sometimes painful experience of the trajectories of these Pilos is accompanied by friends and family, which is not always the case in the Anglo-Saxon literature, where the upwardly mobile appear as fundamentally lonely individuals. These are stories of people who do not seem to be dislocated from communities (whilst they may be distanced from their friends they are not cut off from their families). This is a very interesting finding, as many qualitative studies of social mobility stress the loss of local belonging, roots, etc., particularly when social mobility equates to spatial mobility.
Finally, Costly Opportunities accompanies Pilos beyond university into their early sorties into the labour market. This stage of their trajectories is possibly one in which they confront with some frustration the structural barriers and intense inertia still present in deeply fragmented societies such as those in Latin America. Here, the book provides an accurate account of highly elitist labour markets, especially for Pilos who become lawyers and find extremely difficulty in being offered positions in law firms. It also shows how other areas of experience, such as the new technologies, seem positive for upward mobility. These findings will make all scholars and students of social mobility reflect on what we have done well, but also what we need to urgently promote in our everyday interactions as well as within our institutions. A true sociological best seller!
