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The aim of this article is to define a new kind of labor mobility called technological mobility, defined here as the different levels of technological change experienced by workers as they change jobs over the course of their career. Technological mobility is viewed as a form of career mobility, and it is hypothesized that moving to jobs in higher‐tech industries might prove beneficial to workers' careers irrespective of the level of education or other measures of ability. Factors that determine upward or downward technological mobility are also investigated.

This hypothesis is tested using data from the NLSY79, a nationally representative survey of the United States, between the years 1988 and 2000. Determinants of upward and downward technological mobility are modeled using industry‐level data on technological mobility. Technological mobility is also regressed against wages to measure its impact on careers.

Gender, education and local economic conditions are found to have a significant effect on technological mobility, but the effect varies depending on the way technological intensity is measured. The results also demonstrate that workers who move to high‐tech industries are indeed rewarded with higher wages, even after controlling for education levels and other known factors.

Technological mobility as defined here is an original concept. It is shown to be an important component of overall career mobility. The article also provides an analysis of workers who are able to make the transition into higher‐tech jobs, which is a valuable addition to the research on technological change.

This paper analyses the effects of both training and overeducation on upward mobility in the internal labour market, the professional market and the “supplementary labour market”. The latter segment can be considered as a broadly defined secondary labour market as it is not restricted to the low‐level unskilled jobs only. This broader definition – also found in initial segmentation theory – allows for the changed character of the secondary labour market in the industrialized countries. As expected, “career training” influences upward mobility positively. However, contrary to the predictions of segmentation theory, particularly in the supplementary labour market career training is a means of gaining promotion to a higher level job. Overeducation also affects upward mobility positively, which indicates that overeducation is to some extent a temporary phenomenon at the individual level. However, this also holds in particular in the supplementary segment of the labour market. The estimation results show that the supplementary labour market is less of a dead end than the segmentation theory predicts and is a more valuable place to get training than has been recognized. The supplementary market probably plays an important role in the transition process between initial education and the labour market. Although workers may be initially overeducated in their first jobs, a supplementary segment job could be an attractive step towards reaching a more suitable position in the labour market.

The purpose of this article is to examine the tactics and strategies utilised by Central Eastern European (CEE) migrant workers as they strive to develop their mobility power within the employment relationship and outside of the workplace.

Data is drawn from three qualitative organisational case studies. In total 70 interviews with migrant workers, managers and HR staff were undertaken. There were also nine focus groups with migrant workers across the case studies.

Developing mobility power is not straightforward, particularly in the context of hard HRM strategies. The majority of CEE workers across the case studies viewed the employment relationship as temporary; however, people found it difficult to develop the mobility power necessary to leave and move to a better job. This can be attributed to a combination of people's individual subjective factors and employment in occupations with limited structural and associational power.

This article engages with debates concerning the agency of migrant workers. Existing studies have focused upon the way in which migrant workers utilise mobility power to leave unfavourable employers. However, this article builds upon current debates by examining how migrant workers develop their mobility power. There is also consideration of the individual and collective dimensions of power.

The purpose of this paper is to compare internal and external job mobility (quits and promotions) as separate mechanisms for workers improving earnings and job fit.

The authors sample the core workforce from the British Household Panel Survey, estimating the effects of quits and promotions on two sets of outcomes. The first is subjective; satisfaction with work, pay and hours. The second is objective realities about the job; gross monthly pay and weekly working hours. The authors use linear fixed-effects estimation to control for individual heterogeneity.

Quits and promotions are distinctly different mechanisms for improving earnings and job fit. Quits improve measures of job fit (satisfaction with work, pay and hours) but have little effect on earnings. Internal promotions bring earnings growth but have little effect on job fit. The findings shed light what drives “voluntary” mobility; internal mobility may be driven by higher “reservation wages” and career progression, while external mobility may be driven by job matching and the need to find more appropriate work.

Researchers should treat mobile labour markets with scepticism. The growth of “boundaryless careers” may closer resemble a release valve for poor working conditions in a varied market than a growth in new opportunities for earnings and career progression.

Studies of job mobility overwhelmingly focus on the effects quitting without explicitly comparing this mobility to promotions. This omission gives an incomplete picture of mobility. Bringing promotions back into the discussion, helps to understand why workers commit to internal careers and firm tenure. The paper shows that quits and promotions yield distinctly different outcomes for core workers, despite both mobility types being labelled “voluntary”. Thus, the authors show that inequality in earnings and working conditions is closely tied to access to the “life-chances” of mobility; those who are able to pursue promotion are rewarded objectively; those who quit for a new employer seek a better job fit.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate inter-industry labor mobility, paying special attention to workers who move into high-tech (HT) sectors or knowledge-intensive business services (KIBSs). This study inquires whether skilled workers are mobile and whether the characteristics of mobile workers support the effective transfer of knowledge across industries.

Census data representing 7 percent of Finnish residents were used. The micro-econometric estimation method with correction of sample selection bias was applied.

The results show that young workers are the most mobile, whereas mobility decreased for those with previous work experience, higher education and higher income level. These findings indicate that the highly skilled workers are not necessarily the most mobile, a trend that may weaken the effectiveness of knowledge spillover. However, on average, highly educated workers move into KIBS sectors more often than to other sectors, and HT sectors attract workers who have higher incomes, which may indicate that their skills are highly valued. As a result, knowledge spillovers may emerge. The knowledge spillovers resulting from job mobility are concentrated in large growth centers that have universities.

This study provides a new and topical viewpoint to the mobility literature by focussing on skilled workers and their movement toward the HT and KIBS sectors.

Building on network theory, this study aims to examine how network resources and network knowledge utilization influence mobility within networks of knowledge workers. Specifically, it examines how the availability of resources in a network and knowledge utilization, in a period impacts the structure of the focal network in the following period.

The study uses data from the National Basketball Association to depict the mobility of knowledge workers in a network. Because of the nature of the dependent variable, the study used a conditional fixed-effects quasi-maximum-likelihood Poisson regression as an analytical methodology.

The study finds that network resources are partially significant in predicting knowledge workers’ mobility and that knowledge utilization of networks of knowledge workers in one period negatively affects networks’ structure in the following period.

The study advances our understanding of the knowledge workers’ mobility phenomenon by examining network-level factors that influence the mobility of knowledge workers. It addresses the issue from a different theoretical perspective that is rarely used in studies of knowledge workers, which mostly draw from the traditional human resource literature. Additionally, it contributes to the emerging literature of network dynamics by studying factors that affect network changes. The study also responds to the calls that advocate using sports data to examine organizational phenomena.

To analyse the policies, posting trends and worker experiences during the pandemic, this study uses the concept of motility, i.e. workers' mobility capital, and examines how posted workers' geographical mobility, their access to and conditions of employment and social protection were impacted. The authors discuss how the measures against the pandemic undertaken at the European Union (EU) and national level have affected labour mobility, the impact these measures have had on macro trends of posting to Austria, and lastly, how the pandemic and the actions against it have influenced the lives of posted workers at the individual level.

In this article, the authors focus on the specific case of posting to Austria. The authors ask whether, and if so, how EU and national policies which came about during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the motility of posted workers, and how these workers used their mobility capital in this unfolding context. The authors address the research questions with analyses of EU and national level policies, use administrative data on posting, and individual-level data based on interviews with posted workers and public authorities.

The authors find that the Austrian government's public health and economic priorities were jointly influential on the motility of cross-border workers. The specific case of the posted workers shed new light on the limits to such a national sovereignty approach when it comes to economic interests in an increasingly interdependent European labour market. This study’s findings show that despite the access provided at the policy levels, the motility of posted workers was also affected by their individual circumstances, or competences, which produced different forms of appropriation.

The authors apply the theoretical framework of motility by studying policy developments through the element of access options and conditions, and the posting trends to Austria and worker experiences at the individual level through the lenses of appropriation and competences. The authors find that while the EU and national public policy in enhancing access options have been successful during the COVID-19 period, amelioration attempts in access conditions have not been realised as observed in our analysis of the competence and appropriation dimensions of the posted workers in Austria. This highlights the need for a more integrated approach in the study of policies by exploring beyond the national and EU level policies and focussing on the implementation and observations at the individual level.

The purpose of this paper is to shed knowledge about the relationship between the inter-firm job mobility and the occupational transitions in Spain during the last years. In particular, it is tested whether if the type of job-to-job mobility (voluntary or involuntary) has some influence on the workers careers. The empirical analysis is based on panel data provided by the Living Condition Survey, which is conducted by the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE). The period analysed covers the years between 2005 and 2010 (both inclusive), what allows observing the labour mobility patterns in the recent Spanish economic crisis.

The econometric specification used to analyse occupational mobility corresponds to a random effect panel multinomial logit model. The econometric model is estimated separately for workers that have remained at the same firm and for workers who have changed firms; for the latter group, a dummy variable indicating whether the individual quit or was laid off is included as a regressor.

The results derived from the estimates of the econometric specifications show that individuals who voluntarily leave a firm find the decision has a positive effect on their careers, as their probability of upward occupational mobility is more than 90 per cent higher than for individuals who leave their previous position as a result of having been laid off.

This result is an argument in favour of adopting active labour market policies that help improve information flows in the labour market and allow workers a better understanding of potential job offers from outside firms.

This paper analyses the relationship between inter-firm mobility and occupational transitions that has not yet addressed in the economic literature for Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the idea of the immobile immigrant worker, trapped in the bottom segments of the labour market, by exploring how immigrants and their descendants (sometimes designated second generation immigrants) develop re‐emigration strategies in their first country of settlement in Europe when faced with structural or conjunctural barriers to the advancement of their socio‐economic situation.

Empirical evidence was collected through structured interviews aimed at capturing labour market and residential trajectories of workers of African origin and their descendants in Portugal, with a particular emphasis on the period between 1998 and 2006.

Findings suggest that in some cases, immigrants draw on social networks available to them to engage in processes of continued intra‐European mobility. International re‐emigration emerges as a work‐space mobility strategy for migrant workers and their descendants when there was no significant social mobility in the first destination. Similarly, international geographical mobility may constitute a self‐perpetuating strategy across generations to escape structural immobility faced by certain immigrant groups in destination contexts.

Experiences reported are situated, so cannot be taken to represent those of all workers of African origin in Portugal.

Findings presented in the paper highlight potential consequences of perpetuating geographical mobility throughout time, namely in terms of labour market conditions and family dynamics. They also highlight the need to look at socio‐economic mobility trajectories within Europe as integrated space and not just within national borders.

The paper proposes an encompassing view of migrants’ (im)mobilities over time, to include the conditions of their labour market incorporation and its links to further spatial, international, mobility.

A growing body of literature shows how intragenerational occupational mobility affects economic dynamics and social stratification. In this article the authors aim to carry out a structured review of this literature, outlining a systemic overview for more comprehensive research and public policies.

The authors use methods from structured literature reviews and network science to reveal the segmented research landscape of occupational mobility literature. The authors made an in-depth analysis of the most important papers to summarize the main contributions of the literature and identify research gaps.

The authors reveal a segmented research landscape around three communities: (1) human capital theory, (2) social stratification theory and (3) migration studies. Human capital research uses microfounded mathematical modeling to understand the relationship between skills and mobility. Nevertheless, it cannot explain social segregation and generally does not focus on the importance of local labor demand. Social stratification research can explain the social and institutional barriers to occupational mobility. Migration research studies the relationship between migration, labor demand and social mobility.

This paper is the first literature review that uses network analysis to perform a systematic review of the intragenerational occupational mobility literature. Moreover, this review identifies opportunities for mutual learning and research gaps in the research landscape.