Introduction. Cultural migrants? The consequences of educational mobility and changing social class among first-in-family graduates in Hungary

Abstract

The focus of the special issue of these papers is the investigation of the consequences of education-driven upward mobility of first-in-family graduates in Hungary. All papers except one draw on the findings of a 3-year research project that aimed to explore the int as ‘first-generation intellectuals ersectional effect of class, race and gender on the outcome and the price of different mobility trajectories of first-generation intellectuals.3 They address the question of whether there are significant differences regarding upward educational mobility trajectories and their consequences for academically high achieving Roma and non-Roma men and women. We call our study group academic high achievers or first-in-family graduates – none of whose parents have a degree and who are designated as ‘first generation intellectuals’ in Hungarian mobility studies (among others Ferenczi 2003, Mazsu 2012). Our theoretical stance in this project is that upward social mobility cannot be seen as an individual project but needs to be understood and analysed in the wider context of social inequalities. In this sense, scholars of educational sociology like Diane Reay (2018), an academic of working-class background herself, speak about