This article presents the research results as an author of a thesis to obtain the undergraduate degree in Sociology. Based on an individual experience, this investigation studies the social aspects included in the biography of a male, whose trajectory was defined by a process of upward social mobility during the 1980s. There were analyzed 70 sources from his file (most of them were letters written in the 1980s) and repeated comprehensive interviews. The relationship and contextualization were carried out regarding a review of socioeconomic sources allowed to find relationships between the household economy and education. For analysis of this experience of social mobility, this research articulates the singular and structural dimensions of individual experience. For this reason, the theoretical framework of the sociology of individuation and the principle of variation of scales (or playing with scales), taken from the perspective of microhistory, were applied. The results show how the family becomes a socio-existential support while it influences the construction of a personal identity. It is also possible to understand how university desertion was consolidated as a social challenge during the 1980s and how the construction of something that the individual called “his dreams” became the bridge between subjectivity and identity. All these aspects are correlated to shape the experience of social position change, which is presented as a prism to understand Colombian society at the end of the 20th century.
