Anthony Miro Born is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of urban inequality, with a particular focus on housing and social class. His work has received several prizes for its originality and societal impact, including the 2023 Urban Studies Best Article Award for the most innovative and agenda-setting contribution and the 2025 LSE Impact Prize for his comic on social mobility.

• 1: Introduction: Placing social mobility 2: Social mobility comes to town 3: Moving up from the margins 4: The price of the ticket revisited 5: Meritocracy from 'below' 6: Confronting social mobility 7: Conclusions Methodological Appendix

'This beautifully evocative book traces the long and dark shadow of upward social mobility not only in the lives of those who enjoy this 'success' but also for their families and neighbours. With great skill and empathy Miro Born exposes the deep scars that mobility etches, both across people's lived experience, and on the urban landscape itself. Anyone who is naïve enough to think that promoting social mobility is a social policy panacea should heed the lessons of this haunting book.' MIKE SAVAGE, author of The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past

Anthony Miro Born is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of urban inequality, with a particular focus on housing and social class. His work has received several prizes for its originality and societal impact, including the 2023 Urban Studies Best Article Award for the most innovative and agenda-setting contribution and the 2025 LSE Impact Prize for his comic on social mobility.

• 1: Introduction: Placing social mobility 2: Social mobility comes to town 3: Moving up from the margins 4: The price of the ticket revisited 5: Meritocracy from 'below' 6: Confronting social mobility 7: Conclusions Methodological Appendix

'This beautifully evocative book traces the long and dark shadow of upward social mobility not only in the lives of those who enjoy this 'success' but also for their families and neighbours. With great skill and empathy Miro Born exposes the deep scars that mobility etches, both across people's lived experience, and on the urban landscape itself. Anyone who is naïve enough to think that promoting social mobility is a social policy panacea should heed the lessons of this haunting book.' MIKE SAVAGE, author of The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past

Anthony Miro Born is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of urban inequality, with a particular focus on housing and social class. His work has received several prizes for its originality and societal impact, including the 2023 Urban Studies Best Article Award for the most innovative and agenda-setting contribution and the 2025 LSE Impact Prize for his comic on social mobility.

• 1: Introduction: Placing social mobility 2: Social mobility comes to town 3: Moving up from the margins 4: The price of the ticket revisited 5: Meritocracy from 'below' 6: Confronting social mobility 7: Conclusions Methodological Appendix

'This beautifully evocative book traces the long and dark shadow of upward social mobility not only in the lives of those who enjoy this 'success' but also for their families and neighbours. With great skill and empathy Miro Born exposes the deep scars that mobility etches, both across people's lived experience, and on the urban landscape itself. Anyone who is naïve enough to think that promoting social mobility is a social policy panacea should heed the lessons of this haunting book.' MIKE SAVAGE, author of The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past