Emigration

In emigration states, dichotomies in political debates still revolve around the notion of development. In order to understand how emigration states deal with emigration, return migration, remittances, and diaspora formation, Chapter 9 departs from the notion of the developmental state. However, since the 1980s, international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have cherished and strengthened market mechanisms, civil society actors, and the local state, so politics around emigration helps to elucidate the juxtaposition of the national development state vs. the market–civil society–local state compact. With regard to both economic and cultural issues, the notion of diaspora reigns paramount. On the one hand, emigration states often foster ties to their diaspora abroad. On the other hand, the diaspora is sometimes seen by emigration states as a competitor or threat to nation-building and the consolidation of political power.

Migration, Social Protection, and the (Re)Production of Inequalities in the European Union

Europe, and the European Union in particular, can be conceived as a transnational social space with a high degree of transactions across borders of member states. The question is how efforts to provide social protection for cross-border migrants in the EU reinforce existing inequalities (e.g. between regions or within households), and lead to new types of inequalities (e.g. stratification of labour markets). Social protection in the EU falls predominantly under the purview of individual member states; hence, frictions between different state-operated protection systems and social protection in small groups are particularly apparent in the case of cross-border flows of people and resources. Chapter 5 examines in detail the general social mechanisms operative in cross-border forms of social protection, in particular, exclusion, opportunity hoarding, hierarchization, and exploitation, and also more concrete mechanisms which need to be constructed bottom-up.

Immigration

In immigration states, politics around migration and inequalities runs along two major lines: economic and cultural divisions. Economic divisions refer to market liberalization and the de-commodification of labour as part of the welfare paradox: economic openness towards capital transfer is in tension with political closure towards migrants. It is the competition state vs. the welfare state. In the cultural realm, the contention relates to a clash between cultural rights based on the rights revolution and the myth of national-cultural homogeneity. It finds expression in the liberal paradox: the extension of human rights to migrants who reside in welfare states vs. the efforts to control borders and cultural boundaries. Threat perceptions often lead to a securitization of migration, a juxtaposition of the multicultural state and the democratic-national state. Economic divisions along class lines structure the politicization of cultural heterogeneities.

The Social Question Then and Now

Chapter 2 examines the question whether exit has replaced voice as a dominant strategy to deal with the unequal distribution of life chances between the late nineteenth century and the early 2000s. Instead of exit and voice being exclusive options, there are distinctive combinations of exit and voice across time. Four differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries can be discerned: first, the development of national welfare states in response to political struggles around social inequalities and the implications for social closure towards non-citizens; second, the gradual emergence of sophisticated state migration control; third, the growing political relevance of cultural heterogeneities going beyond class; and fourth, a lack of a coherent theory around the social question which would be able to mobilize politically and intellectually.

No Alternative? The Public Role of Social Scientists in Understanding the Transnationalized Social Question

Given the high political relevance of the transnationalized social question, it is important to ask how social scientists might intervene in public debates on inequalities. Academic and public debates on social inequalities and social protection often raise the question whether and in what ways social scientific research may form a basis for rational political decisions. The main thesis in the spirit of public sociology here is that, while social science research indeed has implications for public policies, such a question is ultimately misleading. While social scientists as experts, advocates, or public intellectuals offer crucial information for describing and understanding social inequalities and social protection, the most important function of social scientists is to offer concepts and interpretations which can guide political debates in the public sphere.

Introduction

The introduction outlines the key questions, the core of the argument, and the outline of the book. The contemporary social question is not only between labour and capital within national states. It is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North and also revolves around cultural heterogeneities. The core question is: how is cross-border migration constituted as the social question of our times? This general question comprises several specific areas of enquiry: how has migration changed since the nineteenth century? What kinds of social inequalities are created in the migratory process and how? How does social protection across borders ameliorate and reproduce inequalities? What are the consequences for political struggles over access to (social) rights and membership? How is the transnationalized social question to be seen in light of environmental destruction? What is the public role of social scientists in understanding the transnationalized social question? The analysis seeks to uncover the social mechanisms driving the (re)production of social inequalities.

Social Protection among Small Groups in European Transnational Social Spaces

Social protection in small groups such as families and kinship and friendship circles is based on reciprocity and sometimes solidarity. This chapter adopts a close examination of social protection in three transnational social spaces, namely Turkey–Germany, Poland–Germany, and Kazakhstan–Germany. It looks at how migrants organize their social protection, taking into account the manifold state regulations, supranational frameworks, and civil society organizations, as well as the migrants themselves and their significant others spread across various state borders. It accounts for migrants’ social protection in small groups, influenced by a variety of heterogeneities which intersect with transnationality, that is, the extent to which actors entertain ties across borders. Special consideration is given to the finding that migrants engage in comparative social positioning in between countries of origin and destination.

The Nexus of Cross-Border Migration and Social Inequalities

How is cross-border migration a visible reflection of manifold global inequalities, political and economic alike? This question raises two major issues. The first concerns how social inequalities affect opportunities for cross-border migration for different socio-economic groups. The second issue, conversely, is how the outcomes of migration affect social inequalities in life chances in both countries of emigration and immigration. Of ultimate interest is whether migration buttresses the dominant forms of social stratification, or whether it transforms the distribution of valued goods in a fundamental way. The results suggest that cross-border migration constitutes a path to upward social mobility for migrants, and—at the same time—that such processes tend to reinforce durable inequalities on a deeper level. As a consequence, cross-border migration reflects the importance of location, residence, and membership in countries as an important proxy for life chances.

The Socio-Natural Question

Exit through cross-border migration is one of several ways in which people have adapted to both the slow-onset and fast-onset environmental destruction of human habitat in the Anthropocene. This destruction pre-empts and precedes all other aspects of the transnationalized social question. Like the threat of nuclear war, the destruction of ecological foundations underlies human life. So far, two generations of scholarship have discussed the climate change–migration debate in a rather narrow framework, without considering in full that climate change is mainly an add-on to environmental destruction. The first generation dealt with vulnerability, the second with adaptation and resilience. These perspectives have occluded the effects of environmental destruction on different categories of people with respect to social inequalities. Scholars have not fully dealt with the analogy between the exploitation of humans by humans and the exploitation of nature by capitalism.

Externalization in Cross-Border Migration

To understand the politics of inequalities around migration necessitates an analysis of the transnational architecture of migration control. The main idea is that the transnationalized social question finds its mirror image in immigration and emigration contexts. While it is the welfare state that promises protection from unfettered global economic competition in the immigration states, development in emigration countries is typically thought to lead to increased participation in the global economy. On the part of immigration countries, migration control assumes a high priority, characterized by externalization through remote control and securitization in areas of origin and transit. On the side of emigration countries, the migration–development nexus takes centre stage—with the developmental (national) state in the global South often working as a functional equivalent to the national welfare state in the global North. The agenda is set by the immigration side by linking migration control in exchange for development cooperation.