This edited volume explores the shifting meaning of educational mobility in a context where the traditional narrative of meritocratic success has lost much of its plausibility. Recent research shows that upwardly mobile individuals often experience their trajectories as deeply ambivalent: educational institutions do not simply open opportunities but also participate in processes of social closure. Schools and universities distribute chances, intervene in biographies, and regulate entries, transitions, and exits within educational pathways. While sociology of education has long shaped debates on mobility, literary studies, cultural studies, and history offer additional perspectives that illuminate overlooked tensions and unsettle taken-for-granted assumptions.

By bringing these approaches into dialogue, the volume addresses the complexity and contradictions of educational mobility at conceptual, methodological, and empirical levels. It foregrounds the tensions that shape mobility: the relation between education and social ascent; the entanglement of mobility with class, gender, and migration; and the milieus and conflicts into which mobile individuals are incorporated.

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