Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Current sociological approach to educational inequalities increasingly focuses on relative chances to educational transitions. Thus, the impact of structural contexts, establishing these chances, is completely eliminated. International comparison and the understanding of “mobility regimes” is facilitated, but mobility development as such remains on the margins of interpretational interest. However, periods of deep social changes give rise to more or less massive mobility movements, which give a realistic meaning to “mobility regimes”. In the Czech Republic (or Czechoslovakia), periods before 1948, between 1948 and 1989 and after 1989 can be justifiably expected to feature typical mobility trajectories and differing mobility patterns. The missing knowledge about the development of educational mobility prevents the understanding of why, despite the changing social situation, the measured relative inequalities in the long-term perspective in the Czech Republic remain stable. Without the knowledge of structural contexts, we will hardly understand inequalities in access to education. The mobility point of view actually means to go against the current relativising trend and to deal with specific local structural contexts.