Before the educated and individualised <i>transfuge de classe</i> : Autobiographical narratives of social advancement in the 19th and early 20th centuries

Research and public debate on social mobility is often based on a specific conception of social mobility. We typically think of long-distance intergenerational mobility of individuals, paradigmatically between the working class and the educated middle class. Autosociobiographies, although critical of optimistic assessments of social mobility, are based on the same paradigm. This article explores the historical diversity of understandings of social mobility, aiming to historicise our current concept. It presents a small number of typical examples drawn from a sample of 530 German-language autobiographies and life-story interviews with men and women born into the working or lower middle classes between 1830 and 1950. I analyse which concepts of social mobility these people use to narrate their social trajectories. I also ask whether they attribute social mobility more to individual effort and merit or to external factors, and how this shapes the personal identities crafted in these autobiographical accounts. This article argues that our current understanding is the result of a long-term shift: There is a trend towards individualised conceptions of social mobility. Abstract notions of achievement have replaced older morally charged concepts when it comes to explanations of social mobility. Education has only gradually come to the centre of popular ideas about social advancement.