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Social mobility in Portugal (1860–1960): operative issues and trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2009

HÉLDER ADEGAR FONSECA  and
PAULO EDUARDO GUIMARÃES
HÉLDER ADEGAR FONSECA
Affiliation:
Both of the Research Centre in Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Évora.
PAULO EDUARDO GUIMARÃES
Affiliation:
Both of the Research Centre in Political Sciences and International Relations, University of Évora.
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Abstract

This article presents the results of a study of social mobility in Portugal from the 1860s to the 1960s. Four distinct social contexts were examined by reference to selected criteria, and marriage records were used as the source for data collection and analysis. The HISCO coding scheme was followed to allow comparisons of intergenerational mobility, stratification, and social change. We present the methodological and operative issues inherent in the hermeneutics of the sources used, identifying difficulties in the process of coding arising from the use of a common language to locate individuals in society. We shall offer an opinion on the pace of Portuguese social mobility during the period.

La mobilité sociale au portugal (1860–1960): résultats et tendances

Nous présentons ici les résultats d'une enquête sur la mobilité sociale au Portugal des années 1860 aux années 1960. Nous avons enquêté sur quatre contextes sociaux différents, selon des critères que nous avons choisis; nous avons aussi recouru aux registres de mariage comme sources de données et d'analyses. Nous avons adopté le code HISCO qui nous permet une étude comparative de la mobilité intergénérationnelle, de la stratification et des changements sociaux. Nous présentons les problèmes tant méthodologiques qu'opératoires liés à l'herméneutique des sources utilisées, tout en relevant les difficultés provenant de la procédure de codage qui utilise un langage généraliste pour situer des individus au sein de la société. Nous donnerons notre point de vue sur le rythme de la mobilité sociale au Portugal durant cette période.

Soziale mobilität in portugal (1860–1960): operative fragen und trends

In dieser Aufsatz werden die Ergebnisse einer Studie zur sozialen Mobilität in Portugal von den 1860er zu den 1960er Jahren mitgeteilt. Mit Hilfe ausgewählter Kriterien wurden vier unterschiedliche soziale Kontexte untersucht, wobei als Quelle für die Datenerhebung und -analyse Heiratsakten benutzt wurden. Um Vergleiche der intergenerationalen Mobilität, der sozialen Schichtung und des sozialen Wandels zu ermöglichen, wurde das HISCO-Kodierungsschema verwendet. Wir legen die methodologischen und operativen Probleme offen, die der Hermeneutik der benutzten Quellen innewohnen, und benennen die Schwierigkeiten bei der Kodierung, die aus der Verwendung einer gemeinsamen Sprache erwachsen, um Individuen in der Gesellschaft zu lokalisieren. Wir äußern auch eine Einschätzung zum Tempo der sozialen Mobilität in Portugal im Untersuchungszeitraum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 24 , Special Issue 3: SPECIAL ISSUE: SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND MOBILITY IN HISTORY , December 2009 , pp. 513 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

ENDNOTES

1 For a detailed account of the historical and sociological studies on social mobility in Portugal during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Hélder A. Fonseca and P. Guimarães, ‘Mobilidade social intergeracional em Portugal 1911–1957: os exemplos de Évora e Setúbal’, in Livro de homenagem a Miriam Halpern Pereira (Lisbon, 2005).

2 Hélder Adegar Fonseca, O Alentejo no século XIX: economia e atitudes económicas (Lisbon, 1996); P. Guimarães, ‘O Alentejo e o desenvolvimento mineiro durante da Regeneração’, in Miguel Rego ed., Mineração no Baixo Alentejo, Vol. I (Castro Verde, Câmara Municipal, 1996), 114–29.

3 C. Castelo, Passagens para África: o povoamento de Angola e Moçambique com naturais da metrópole 1920–1974 (Porto, 2007).

4 Pedro Lains and Álvaro Ferreira da Silva eds., História económica de Portugal, Vol. III: O século XX (Lisbon, 2005).

5 While the work of E. Estanque and J. Mendes, Classes e desigualdades sociais em Portugal (Porto, 1997), was inspired by Erik Olin Wright, Class counts: comparative studies in class analysis (Cambridge, 1997), Cabral, M. V., ‘Mobilidade social e atitudes de classe em Portugal’, Análise Social 146–7 (1998), 381–414Google Scholar, is closer to Goldthorpe's pragmatic approach to social stratification. See R. Erikson and J. H. Goldthorpe, The constant flux: a study of class mobility in industrial societies (Oxford, 1993).

6 The marriage registers from before 1911 (parish records) are available to the public in the Historical Archives of the Districts of Évora, of Setúbal and of Figueira da Foz. The registers from after 1911 are kept in the archives of the Conservatórias do Registo Civil in Évora, Setúbal, Figueira da Foz and Barreiro. The Historical Sample of Portuguese Social Mobility (HSPSM) was built with data gathered from those sources and will be available soon.

7 PACO (Project for the Analysis and Classification of Occupations in Portugal) was coordinated by Nuno L. Madureira and adopted closely the principles outlined in M. H. D. van Leeuwen et al., Historical Standard Coding of Occupations: final coding principles with examples from Norway and Germany (HISMA Occasional Papers & Documents Series, 4) (Berlin, 1999). See Nuno L. Madureira coord., 1000 ocupações históricas: projecto para a análise e classificação das ocupações/Historical International Standard of Classification of Occupations, PACO/HISCO (Lisbon, 2000).

8 Miles Andrew and David Vincent eds., Building European society: occupational change and social mobility in Europe 1840–1940 (Manchester, 1993), 3.

9 Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas, and Andrew Miles, HISCO: Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (Leuven, 2002), 26 (and http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/); van Leeuwen, M.H.D., Maas, I., and Miles, A., ‘Creating an Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO): an exercise in multi-national, interdisciplinary co-operation’, Historical Methods 37 (2004), 186–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Madureira coord., 1000 ocupações históricas. Occupations were classified into HISCLASS using the following recode job: I. Maas and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, hisco_hisclass12a_@inc; see http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/. See also Maas, Ineke and van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., ‘Total and relative endogamy by social origin: a first international comparison of changes in marriage choices during the nineteenth century’, International Review of Social History 50 (2005), 275–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen and I. Maas, ‘A short note on Hisclass’, November 2005, available at http://historyofwork.iisg.nl/docs/hisclass-brief.doc.

10 Unfortunately, from the 1960s onward the occupations of the parents of the bridegrooms were not registered in the marriage records.

11 Frédéric Vidal, Les habitants d'Alcântara: histoire social d'un quartier de Lisbonne au début du 20e siècle (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2006).

12 Katz, Michael B., ‘Occupational classification in history’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3 (1972), 63–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anderson, Margo, ‘(Only) white men have class: reflections on early 19th-century occupational classification’, Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal 21 (1994), 5–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrew Miles, Social mobility in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England (London, 1999), 18–20.

13 Such as ‘worker’ (26.5 per cent); ‘seaman’ and ‘fisherman’ (7.4 per cent); ‘rural worker’ and ‘day-labourer’ (4.3 per cent); ‘farmer’ (3.6 per cent); ‘carpenter’ (2.6 per cent); ‘mason’ (2.3 per cent); blacksmith (2.5 per cent); ‘trade employee’ (2.7 per cent); ‘office employee’ (1.8 per cent); ‘trader’ (1.9 per cent); ‘owner’ (1.7 per cent); ‘cork worker’ (1.4 per cent); and ‘shoemaker’ (1.3 per cent).

14 João Freire, Anarquistas e operários: ideologia, ofício e práticas sociais: o Anarquismo e o Operariado em Portugal, 1900–1940 (Lisbon, 1992).

15 Ana Nunes de Almeida, A fábrica e a família: famílias operárias no Barreiro (Barreiro, 1993), 146–7.

16 Hélder A. Fonseca and Paulo Guimarães, ‘Os catalães da Azaruja: ofício, família e mobilidade social (1845–1914)’, in Jordi Nadal ed., Nissagues gironines en la indústria surera portuguesa (1845–1985) (Barcelona, 2005); Maria Filomena Mónica ed., Os vidreiros da Marinha Grande: actas sindicais (1919–45) (Lisbon, n.d.); Nunes de Almeida, A fábrica e a família; Conceição Martins and Nuno Monteiro eds., História do trabalho e das ocupações, Vol. III: A agricultura: dicionário (Lisbon, 2002), 339–42.

17 José Pedro Sousa Dias, A farmácia em Portugal: uma introdução à sua história (Lisbon, 1994).

18 P. Guimarães, Elites e indústria no Alentejo: 1890–1960 (Évora, 2006), chapter 6.

19 Fonseca, O Alentejo no século XIX; José Vicente Serrão, ‘Lavrador’, in Martins and Monteiro eds., História do trabalho e das ocupações, Vol. III, 64–76.

20 Adelino Mendes and António Barros, O Algarve e Setúbal (Lisbon, 1916); Maria Conceição Quintas, Setúbal: economia, sociedade e cultura operária (1880–1930) (Lisbon, 1998), 270–4; Inês Amorim ed., História do trabalho e das ocupações, Vol. II: Pescas (Lisbon, 2001).

21 Rui Cascão, Figueira da Foz e Buarcos 1861–1910 (Figueira da Foz, 1998), 457.

22 Fonseca, Hélder Adegar, ‘O perfil social da “elite censitária” no sul de Portugal: Alentejo, século XIX’, Ayer 48 (2002), 207–10.Google Scholar

23 Pedreira, Jorge, ‘Os negociantes de Lisboa na segunda metade do século XVIII: padrões de recrutamento e percursos sociais’, Análise Social 116 -–17 (1992), 407–40Google Scholar; Fonseca, ‘O perfil social da “elite censitária”’, 190–5; Mónica, Filomena, ‘Capitalistas e industriais (1870–1914)’, Análise Social 99 (1987), 818–63.Google Scholar

24 Ana Silvia Scott, Famílias, formas de união e reprodução social no noroeste português (séculos XVIII e XIX) (Guimarães, 1999), 349–98; Miguel Monteiro, Migrantes, emigrantes e brasileiros (1834–1926) (Fafe, 2000), 247–318.

25 A. P. Tavares de Almeida, ‘A construção do estado liberal: elite política e burocracia na “Regeneração” (1851–1890)’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Lisbon, 1995), 268–319.

26 Miguel Monteiro, A emigração como mecanismo de mobilidade social em Portugal: o exemplo de Fafe (1834–1926) (XVII Encontro da APHES, papers) (Lisbon, 2007); available at http://aphes.fe.unl.pt/aphescom.html.

27 Helena Alves, Minas de S. Domingos: génese, formação social e identidade mineira (Mértola, 1997), 128–30; Paulo Guimarães, Indústria e conflito no meio rural: os mineiros alentejanos (1858–1938) (Lisbon, 2001), 115–77; Guimarães, Paulo, ‘Recrutamento, mobilidade e demografia na mina de S. Domingos, Alentejo (1860–1900)’, Revista de Demografia histórica Histórica XXIII (2005), 21–70.Google Scholar

28 Manuel Villaverde Cabral, O operariado nas vésperas da república (1909–1910) (Lisbon, 1977), 92–3; Pedro de Freitas, Memórias dum ferroviário (Lisbon, 1954).

29 Filomena Mónica ed., Os vidreiros da Marinha Grande, iv; Nunes de Almeida, A fábrica e a família, 153–7 and 174.

30 Correia, António Mendes, ‘Estrutura social do povo português’, Revista do Centro de Estudos Demográficos 8 (1953), 123.Google Scholar

31 Luciano Amaral, ‘O trabalho’, in Lains and Ferreira da Silva eds., História económica de Portugal, 68.

32 Machete, Rui, ‘A origem social dos estudantes portugueses’, Análise Social 22 –4 (1968), 241.Google Scholar

33 The ‘upper-middle class’ are ‘higher managers and administrative workers, medium-skilled liberal professions’; the ‘upper class’ are the ‘higher-skilled liberal professions, and higher managers and administrative staff working for major corporations and the state’. See Nunes, Adérito Sedas and Miranda, J. David, ‘A composição social da população portuguesa – alguns aspectos e implicações’, Análise Social 27 –8 (1969), 333–81.Google Scholar

34 Machete, ‘A origem social dos estudantes portugueses’, 229–30; Nunes, Adérito Sedas, ‘A População Universitária portuguesa: análise preliminar’, Análise Social 22–4 (1968), 327–35, 332.Google Scholar

35 In 1979, 80 per cent of those managers had higher qualifications. See Carmo, Hermano, ‘Os dirigentes da administração em Portugal’, Estudos Políticos e Sociais V (1987), 319.Google Scholar

36 Guimarães, Elites e industria no Alentejo, 359–93.

37 Manuel de Mello, Inquérito á estrutura social do concelho de espinho, 1942 (Lisbon, 1943), 28. See also, for the industrial footwear sector (S. João da Madeira), Elísio Estanque, Entre a fábrica e a comunidade: subjectividades e práticas de classe no operariado do Calçado (Porto, 2000), 210–20.

38 This universe was analysed by Makler in 1964 using a sample of 306 interviewees, the oldest of whom was born around 1910. The majority of those interviewed were sons of industrial entrepreneurs (43.2 per cent), with traders (14.5 per cent), farmers and landowners (9.6 per cent), the liberal professions (13.2 per cent), public servants and the military (8.9 per cent), office employees (3.6 per cent), skilled or unskilled workers (2.0 per cent), and rural workers (0.7 per cent) accounting for the rest. It is also remarkable that 32 per cent of those leaders came from ‘small’ or ‘medium-sized’ industrial, commercial, or agricultural firms. See Harry Mark Makler, A ‘elite’ industrial portuguesa (Lisbon, 1969), 59.

39 This picture is confirmed by empirical observations on, for example, the metalworkers of CUF, the main industrial company in Barreiro: ‘workers not specialized and craft workers [the metalworkers] had two distinctive and opposed sets of working conditions. As time passed, and as the result of intermarriage within the industrial community, those two groups moved closer to one other [in terms of wage differentiation] … In the 1940s, a CUF craft worker was, almost without exception, the son of a former worker there.’ See Nunes de Almeida, A fábrica e a família, 153.

40 In 1961, when the Colonial War broke out and one year after the country joined EFTA, a researcher at the Portuguese Industrial Association surveyed the labour motives of 370 workers (male and female) from different generations, drawn from Lisbon's various metalworking firms (which employed between 11 and 400 workers). The survey found that 81 per cent of the male specialized workers born between 1916 and 1947 said that they began working when they were aged between 5 and 14 (84 per cent), with 67 per cent who began working when aged between 11 and 14. Only 58.8 per cent of those interviewed began their working life in the industrial sector, and only 29.5 per cent of their fathers were industrial workers. See Maria Susana de Almeida, Motivações no trabalho (Lisbon, 1962), 19–98.

41 For the methodology and topographic models used here see van Leeuwen, Marco H. D. and Maas, Ineke, ‘Log-linear analysis of changes in mobility patterns’, Historical Methods 24 (1991), 65–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also Ineke Maas and Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, ‘Industrialization and intergenerational Mobility in Sweden’, Acta Sociologica 45 (2002), 179–94. Also useful was A. Cobalti, Lo studio della mobilitá (Rome, 1995), chapters 3 and 7. We also used LEM: log-linear and event history analysis with missing data, version 1.0, software developed by Jeroen Vermunt at Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

42 Manuel Villaverde Cabral, ‘Classes sociais’, in António Barreto and Filomena Mónica eds., Dicionário de história de Portugal, Vol. VII (Porto, 1999), 328–36. Mobility tables for the four different regional contexts, by period cohort, are provided in the appendix (see Tables 5a, 5b, 5c, and 5d).

43 Hartmut Kaelble, ‘Social mobility’, in Peter Stearns ed., Encyclopedia of European social history from 1350 to 2000, Vol. III (New York, 2001), 113–17.