Call for Papers for the ECSR thematic conference
Mechanisms of Social Mobility
Keynote: Florencia Torche
11th – 12th May 2026, Zurich, Switzerland
What sociological processes determine how individuals are mobile between socio-economic positions? What mechanisms explain not only social immobility but also upward, downward or horizontal movement? While patterns and rates of social mobility are well documented, the underlying processes that produce them remain less well understood. This conference aims to bring together researchers who investigate the processes that underlie mobility both, between generations and across the life course.
While all contributions to social mobility are welcome, we particularly invite contributions that
- Use innovative or fine-grained measures and conceptualizations of social positions beyond broad class and income categories – and potentially new data and methods to analyze these.
- Examine the role of individual characteristics and detailed social origins as determinants of mobility paths to develop and assess explanatory accounts of how social mobility occurs.
- Go beyond simple origin-destination pairs but gain insights into mobility by looking at mobility trajectories, potentially combining mobility within and between generations.
All contributions should aim to provide theoretical insights into understanding mobility processes.
The conference will be held at the University of Zurich from Monday 11th to Tuesday 12th of May 2026. All presentations will be held in a plenary format to facilitate exchange and discussion. The program features a keynote lecture from Florencia Torche (Princeton).
Practical information
To apply for the workshop, please send a short abstract (max. 250 words) and an extended abstract (max. 1000 words) of the paper that you would like to present to social.mobility@soziologie.uzh.ch. The submission deadline is 18 Jan 26. Notes of acceptance will be sent by 16 Feb 26. Participation in the workshop is free of charge, and lunches as well as a conference dinner on 11th May are included. Participants are responsible for their own accommodation and travel expenses. Travel awards of CHF 500 for early-career scholars or scholars from lower-income countries are available; please include a short statement in your submission if you wish to apply for the travel award.
In case you have any questions, please write an email tosocial.mobility@soziologie.uzh.ch.
The workshop is organized by Sarah Berkinshaw, Per Block, Linus Krug, and Jingying Wang at the University of Zurich and co-funded by the SNSF project ‘Labour Markets as Emergent Mobility Networks’.