Inequality of Opportunity and Intergenerational Mobility

Francesco Farina
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Francesco Farina: Sapienza University of Rome

Chapter Chapter 7 in The Rise of Inequality and the Fall of Social Mobility, 2025, pp 211-237 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Charles Dickens is considered the founder of the social novel. A writer with liberal sentiments, he was very concerned about the damage that the extreme form of capitalism of his time was causing in people’s lives. He never stopped nurturing the hope that English society could over time become a safer and more liveable place, free from conflicts and poverty. After a first version, Dickens decided to rewrite the ending of Great Expectations—the coming-of-age novel of a poor boy, Philip Pirrip, known as Pip—precisely because he did not want to give up a narrative that suggested the protagonist’s arrival at a satisfying social condition. The traditional way of representing social mobility reflects Dickens’ point of view well: social ascent as an escape from poverty, and as self-realisation by a young person. However, in the current historical phase, the manifestations of social mobility seem to have little in common with the image that the history of the last centuries has handed down to us.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-92843-7_7

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