Mobility Spaces: Geographical and Professional Distances in Career Mobility

Abstract

This article introduces the novel concept of “mobility spaces” to investigate the role of geographical and professional distances in career mobility and how they are influenced by social structural factors. Mobility spaces encompass physical, social, and legal spaces that professionals navigate while shaping their career trajectories over time. The study focuses on the movement of professionals across mobility spaces and examining the constraints and opportunities affecting their career paths. Using empirical data on the mobility of Hong Kong law firm partners from 1994 to 2021, the article demonstrates that social structural factors such as gender, race and ethnicity, firm origins, and firm prestige significantly influence the geographical and professional distances that professionals manage to traverse in their career moves. The mobility spaces theory aims to use space to contextualize the interplay between individual and macrostructural factors in shaping professional career outcomes.