Abstract

It assesses how processes of social closure enhance intergenerational immobility in the regulated professions and thus promote persistence at the top of the occupational hierarchy. I compare five European countries (Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Italy) that differ considerably in their degree of professional regulation and in their broader institutional arrangements. I run log-linear and multinomial logistic regression models on e datasets with detailed information at the level of unit occupations. Analyses indicate that children of licensed professionals are far more likely to inherit the occupation of their parents and that this stronger micro-class immobility translates into higher chances of persistence in the upper class. These results support social closure theory and confirm the relevance of a micro-class approach for the explanation of social fluidity and of its cross-national variations.