Occupational Mobility in the Life Course of Intermarried Ethnic Minorities

Current stratification research usually takes on an individualistic perspective focusing primarily on a social and economic position of individual men and women in the labour market. This approach, however, fails to recognise family and household context that plays a key role in understanding social inequality. Although early stratification research considers the role of family in social stratification, it emphasises only the status of the male family head as a key factor determining a social position of other family members (e.g. Blau and Duncan 1967; Goldthorpe 1980). It was not until recently, that family (all family members as a whole) was recognised as a key unit of analysis in explaining social inequality. Drobnič and Blossfeld (2004) highlight the importance of family properties – the properties of the relationships between individuals in the family – as one mechanism underlying a stratified access to positions in the labour market. Subsequently, they conduct an empirical research investigating how socio-economic assortative matings as well as upward and downward marriages affect labour market achievement of husbands and wives during the family life cycle.