Abstract
Social mobility is typically analyzed as intra‐ or intergenerational movements between social positions that are assumed to be hierarchically ordered. The first systematic examination of horizontal and vertical stratification was made by Pitirim Sorokin in
Social and Cultural Mobility
in 1927. Positions located on similar levels with respect to income, living standard, prestige, occupational status, or educational privilege could be separated horizontally, and positions located on different levels on one or more of these dimensions were regarded as vertically separated. In the first postwar decades, social mobility was mainly analyzed as unidimensional and vertically ordered movement. Pierre Bourdieu's reconceptualization of the notion of “social space,” where the spatial dimensions are constructed from indicators on various forms of capital, led to a renewed interest in horizontal segmentation, mobility trajectories, and mobility barriers. From being almost forgotten, analyses of horizontal mobility and segmentation have enjoyed a renaissance in sociological research.