The Cerdanya valley in the eastern Pyrenees has a physical unity into which a political frontier has been imposed to divide it. The social and cultural repercussions of this Franco-Spanish border have created obstacles to marriage which are not due to topography. Choice of month of marriage is under cultural control and the study of seasonality in marriages recorded in the registers of all the Cerdan parishes on both sides of the border demonstrated differences over time and between French and Spanish sectors. It is suggested that these changes demonstrate the process of distancing of the two populations. Cluster and correspondence analysis showed progressive differentiation of the seasonality patterns of the French and Spanish Cerdans despite the geographic unity of the valley. Sociocultural factors are presumed responsible.

The patterns of male social mobility among the contemporary populations of Otmoor are described in terms of both intra-and inter-generational mobility. The social classes are differentiated by IQ and it is shown that sons' IQ is more highly correlated with their class, after their social mobility than before it. In 85 father-son pairs the number of steps sons moved in the social scale is positively related to the magnitude of the difference between their IQ and that of their fathers. However, the relationship between social mobility and IQ appears to be entirely confined to non-locally born subjects and the social mobility among the locals, although of comparable dimension is essentially non-meritocratic. These findings are discussed in relation to the structure of the Otmoor populations and particularly the phenomenon of selective out-migration.

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