Several patterns of social mobility include:

 

• Horizontal mobility involves moving within the same status category. An example of this is a Financial Analyst who leaves one Bank to take a position as a Financial Analyst at another Bank.

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• Vertical mobility, in contrast, involves moving from one social level to another. A promotion in management in the Investment Banking Sector is an example of upward mobility, while a demotion in management is downward mobility.

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• Intragenerational mobility, also termed career mobility, refers to a change in an individual’s social standing, especially in the workforce, such as occurs when an individual works his/her way up the corporate ladder.

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• Intergenerational mobility refers to a change in social standing across generations, such as occurs when a person from a lower-class family graduates from a prestigious university.

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• Structural mobility represents the major upheavals and changes in society and they can enhance opportunities of a large number of people to move up the Social ladder at the same time. Eg: Completion of our developmental programmes.

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• Individual mobility is a micro view of social mobility where the determinants of mobility are race, gender, religion, occupation, etc.

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• Absolute mobility measures whether and by how much living standards in a society have increased or decreased.

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• Relative mobility refers to the fluidity of a society. If one person moves up in relative terms, another must have moved down.

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