P-02/04 Social stratification and changing division of labour in rural Norway

Paper presented at the XI World Congress in Rural Sociology Trondheim – Norway, July 25 –30. The point of departure for this paper is changes in the forms and relations of production in rural Norway over the last decades. Some opportunities for making a living have closed, while a vast number of other opportunities have opened through education and migration. Of special interest is rural people growing up in the dynamic 1970s and 1980s who were able to combine geographical mobility (migration to urban educational centres) with upward social mobility – what we in this paper label term as a geo-social 'class journey'. This has taken them out of the rural primary industries and brought them into labour relations and social positions in cities unknown by their parents. These processes, we will claim, have changed the logic of social stratification in rural societies. Further, we want to investigate the urban/rural differences in these processes, in particular the role of education and migration. Questions posed will be: To what extent is the social stratification of rural and urban areas reproduced from one generation to the next? What is the impact of education on intergenerational social mobility? How does migration influence the 'class journey'? The paper will draw upon theories of economic, cultural and social capital based on the works of Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam. Data to test these hypothesis will be drawn from the Nor¬wegian Generation Database (GD), which combines various register data sources (e.g. Cen¬suses, education registers, and migration registers), which enable us to follow those born in a certain year (in this case in 1965) through their life course.