Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and Social Inequalities

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Part of The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and Social Inequalities

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The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and Social Inequalities

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The Transnationalized Social
Question: Migration and Social
Inequalities
THOMAS FAIST

Abstract

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The social question is back. Yet today’s social question is not primarily between labor
and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global
South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking
a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain
ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of
the cross-border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration
for social inequalities within national states. In earlier periods class differences dominated political conflicts, and while class has always been crisscrossed by manifold
heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language;
it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened over the past decades.

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INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION AS THE TRANSNATIONALIZED
SOCIAL QUESTION
On a global scale, distress and social instability today are reminiscent of
the living conditions that prevailed through a large part of the nineteenth
century in Europe. At that time the social question was the central subject
of volatile political conflicts between the ruling classes and working-class
movements. From the late nineteenth century onward, the social question
was nationalized in the welfare states of the global North which sought
a class compromise via redistribution of goods, whereas social protection
beyond the national welfare state is found mostly in soft law in the form of
social standards (Faist, 2009). We now may be on the verge of a new social
conflict, again on a transnational scale, but characterized more than ever
by manifold boundaries—such as those between capital and labor, North
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

and South, developed and underdeveloped or developing countries, or
those in favor of increased globalization against those advocating national
solutions.
The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the
global South and the global North and also revolves around cultural heterogeneities. A proliferation of political groupings and NGOs rally across
national borders in support of various campaigns such as environmental concerns, human rights, and women’s issues, Christian, Hindu, or Islamic fundamentalism, migration, and food sovereignty, but also resistance to growing
cultural diversity and increasing mobility of goods, services, and persons
across the borders of national states. The nexus of South–North migration
and cultural conflicts is no coincidence, as cross-border migration from South
to North not only raises economic issues, such as productivity and labor
market segmentation (Schierup, Munck, Liki´c-Brbori´c, & Neergaard, 2015)
but also has been part of the constitution of cultural conflicts around “us”
versus “them.” Migration thus has been one of the central fields in which the
solution of the old social question in the frame of the national welfare state
has been called into question, hence the term “transnationalized social question.” One of the core questions for the social sciences, therefore, is: How is
cross-border migration constituted as the social question of our times? This
general question can be specified into various sub-questions to be addressed
in this essay: Has there been a move from political voice to territorial exit from
the nineteenth to the twenty-first century? What kinds of social inequalities
are created in the migratory process and how? How does social protection
across borders ameliorate and reproduce inequalities? How have immigration states in Europe shifted migration control to the countries of origin and
transit through externalization? How are class and cultural conflicts constituted in the processes of postmigration in immigration and emigration
states? Do we need to expand the social question to a socio-natural question to understand the nexus between environmental destruction and migration in the current geological period provisionally called the Anthropocene? In
answering these questions we need to uncover the social mechanisms driving
the (re)production of social inequalities.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
The social question then and now: From voice to exit? With respect to global
income inequalities, class in the Marxian sense accounted for more than
half of the variance in the late nineteenth century, and location (country)
for a minor fraction only. The situation has almost reversed more than a
hundred years later when most of the variance was explained by location
and no longer by class (Milanovic, 2016; cf. Bourguignon & Morrisson,

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2002). Therefore, the question arises whether exit in the form of cross-border
migration has replaced voice in the form of political mobilization as a
dominant strategy to deal with the unequal distribution of life chances. At
the very least, exit in the form of migration is a significant strategy on the
microscale in addition to collective strategies such as welfare states and
global redistribution on the macro level (Korzeniewicz & Moran, 2009).
Four differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries can be
discerned. First, national welfare states developed in response to political
struggles around the old social question between capital and labor. Whereas
economic exchange for increased productivity and overall wealth may favor
open borders, the political logic of the welfare state requires social closure
toward noncitizens (Freeman, 1986). This is so because open borders would
pit migrants against natives in competition for valuable goods, such as
employment, housing, and education. Moreover, such conflicts over the
distribution of goods are usually complemented by a second line of conflict
around cultural differences, between the idea of national homogeneity, on
the one hand, and claims toward cultural pluralism and autonomy on the
part of migrants and other minorities on the other hand. Second, we have
seen the gradual emergence of sophisticated state migration control, making
it possible not only to guard national borders but extend external borders
into regions of transit and origin (externalization and remote control),
and internal borders within immigration states. Third, there has been an
ever-growing political relevance of cultural heterogeneities going beyond
class. In Europe, this general trend is particularly visible in the politicization
of differences such as religion (“we” vs the Muslims). Fourth, whereas
in the nineteenth century socialist and anarchist theories guided social
movements, such as the labor movement in the northwest of Europe, the
situation is much more pluralistic nowadays. Today, there is no identifiably
coherent theory around the social question which would be able to mobilize
politically around a plural set of heterogeneities.
Overall, the transnationalization of cross-border flows and the concomitant process of increasing cultural diversity have challenged the welfare
state—which rests on nationally bounded solidarity and reciprocity and
class compromise. In the contemporary period, the recognition of gender,
ethnicity, religion, and related heterogeneities cannot be meaningfully regulated by the classical welfare state, not least because social transformation
has resulted in shifting the risks for life chances from groups to individuals
(Beck, 1992). It is the regulatory and not the redistributive welfare state
which is active in the field of heterogeneities. Ironically, the European Union
(EU) may contribute even further to this development since ambitious issues
of thick understandings of equality and solidarity take a back seat while
thin conceptions dominate the discussions on social policy (Münch, 2012).

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The nexus of cross-border migration and social inequalities raises two major
issues. The first concerns how social inequalities affect opportunities for
cross-border migration for different socioeconomic groups. The second issue
is, conversely, how the outcomes of migration affect social inequalities in
life chances in the countries of emigration and the countries of immigration.
Available research suggests that cross-border migration constitutes a path
to upward social mobility for migrants, and—at the same time—that such
processes tend to reinforce inequalities on a deeper level (Faist, 2016). The
term “durable inequalities” (Tilly, 1998) refers to unequal power relations
and inequalities derived from categorizations of heterogeneities along
gender, ethnicity, religion, caste, and class, none of which is fundamentally
transformed in emigration and immigration regions and in transnational
social spaces. In addition, new inequalities emerge, such as those arising as a
consequence of the growth of subcontracting in labor markets of destination
regions. As a consequence, cross-border migration reflects the importance
of location and of membership as an important proxy for life chances.
Migration, social protection, and the (re)production of inequalities: examining
social protection in the context of migration is particularly important
because it links the disparate, fragmented social spaces of unequal life
chances and social protection across the world. The organization of social
protection across borders includes the assemblages of social protection,
encompassing programmes by the state and civil society organizations,
but also social protection in kinship groups. It also concerns the issue
of how to conceptualize social protection with respect to human rights.
Essential to an understanding of the current status of cross-border social
protection is the exploration of the elements of global governance and
existing transnational social standards in the realm of migration. On the
national level, as Marshall (1992 [1949]) pointed out long ago, social rights
and, above all, social citizenship are important for legitimizing social
inequalities arising out of capitalist markets. For transnational social spaces,
there is no similar normative reference frame. The International Labor
Organization (ILO) conventions 97 and 143 and other social and human
rights conventions suffer from their nonbinding character. Thus, it does
not make sense to speak of transnational (social) citizenship—except in
the sense of overlapping national citizenships, namely dual citizenship, in
which case citizens are, in principle, able to access (quasi-)full rights in both
countries. Nor is it meaningful to speak of global or world citizenship in an
institutional sense although such a concept may guide mobilization favoring
cross-border norms. World citizenship is simply nonexistent de facto or
de jure because, apart from exceptions such as claims to compensation for
land loss in the case of development projects like dam-building, only soft
law and social standards in international conventions pertain, and these

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cannot be claimed successfully on a regular basis by migrants themselves.
Transnationalized social protection and concomitant social inequalities are
addressed on various levels, with national states as well as international
organizations or local municipalities playing a role—in addition to the
other dimensions of social organization, namely market, community, and
family. Global criteria and norms, such as international conventions, and a
global horizon of thinking as a cognitive schema, serve as reference points
for agents who strive for political change in this area (Cabrera, 2011) by
pointing, for example, to a growing public awareness across the globe
concerning transnational exchange, interdependence, and dependencies
(Furia, 2005).
While cross-border social protection strategies can substantially improve
the livelihoods of individuals or families and the opportunities for social
protection, for example, through remittances for the education or healthcare
of other family members, fundamental inequalities between the regions of
origin and the target regions but also within origin groups tend to persist.
Institutionally embedded forms of public social protection in the regions of
origin are often exposed to additional pressures, for instance, through the exit
of skilled workers. New inequalities arise in the course of cross-border migration, for example, between households in the regions of origin that receive
remittances and those that do not, or in the gender-specific division of labor
in the immigration regions, where the emancipation of women in the immigration countries results in women from peripheral countries taking over the
vacant positions for care work in the household (Nakano Glen, 1992). Also,
existing social protection systems in the countries of origin may be disrupted
by remittances and demographic decline.
Research has yielded the insight that migrants engage in comparative
social positioning between countries of origin and destination, between
migrant groups, and within their own groups (Faist, Bilecen, Barglowski,
& Sienkiewicz, 2015). The subjective significance and attribution of social
inequalities are worth examining in detail because the transnationalized
social question is conceivable only against the background of social inequalities that are deemed to be normatively unjustifiable. From an empirical
point of view, the criteria for the assessment of inequalities are usually
oriented to norms that are relational and allow comparisons with categories
of people who are, in social terms, not too far removed from each other. Also,
sometimes comparisons of selected elements of social security systems,
such as healthcare or old age pensions, become relevant. The interesting
question is what categories of people and which norms are considered
relevant by the participating actors in the respective labor and social
protection organizations and political arenas. In a transnational perspective, inequalities can be regarded as borderless: While state borders, and

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especially the legal and political boundaries of membership and affiliation,
are constitutive of a person’s opportunities in life, the social, cultural, and
economic boundaries are not necessarily congruent with the daily realities
of cross-border workers.
Externalization and internalization of social inequalities in cross-border migration: understanding the politics of inequalities around migration necessitates
an analysis of the transnational architecture of migration control. The
transnationalized social question finds its mirror image in immigration and
emigration contexts. In the global North, it is the welfare state that promises
protection from unfettered global economic competition in the immigration
states, and the developmental (national) state in the global South often serves
as a functional equivalent. 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 center
stage. Both the migration–control nexus and the migration–development
nexus have increasingly merged into a development–migration–control
nexus: resources for development cooperation are connected by the donors
to the willingness of the receivers to cooperate on matters of migration
control (Gaibazzi, Dünnwald, & Bellagamba, 2016). The control part of the
nexus has resulted in externalization as well as internalization, that is, the
securitization of control not only as a form of outsourcing and thus remote
control but also control within national states. Borders have moved both
outward and inward. Detection, detention, and deportation are among the
most visible control practices in many immigration states nowadays. In
general, immigration regulations and asylum procedures (e.g., for refugees
who have a subsidiary status and therefore have to return to countries
of origin upon the cessation of violence) have made family reunification
increasingly difficult.
In the end, externalization and internalization are inextricably connected.
Since much of border politics and policies by states can be seen as a response
to threatened identities and security, one may ask about the function of
borders beyond controlling migrants. Border walls and externalization
efforts may be a clue that state control is one of the most visible areas of
transnationalization in which national states and supranational entities
such as the EU can show competence by directly addressing the volume of
transactions across borders. Such policies primarily fulfill a role of symbolic
bordering, by providing a reassuring image of security to a population
whose job opportunities have partly migrated elsewhere or whose welfare
states have been transformed and sometimes even removed from democratic
ownership. There is no reliable empirical evidence that migrants constitute
competitors to jobs or—overall—a burden on welfare states in the global

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North (Ku¸s, 2018). The externalization and internationalization of border
control may be more about the consequences of societal transformation than
about migrants per se.
The politics of social inequalities in immigration states: politics around migration and inequalities runs along two major lines, economic divisions, and
cultural ones. With respect to economic divisions, they lie between market
liberalization in the competition state and the de-commodification of labor as
part of the welfare paradox: Economic openness toward capital transfer is in
tension with political closure toward migrants. It is the dichotomy of the competition state versus the welfare state. In the cultural realm, the contention
occurs over the rights revolution versus 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 against the efforts to control
borders and cultural boundaries. Threat perceptions often lead to a securitization of migration. It is a juxtaposition of the multicultural state and the rule
of law on the one hand and the democratic-national state on the other hand.
Economic divisions along class lines structure the politicization of cultural
heterogeneities.
Market liberalization, securitization, and the rights revolution have formed
a triad that constitutes the main pillars of the dynamics of the politics of
(in)equalities and integration. In sum, market liberalization serves as a basis
for class distinctions among migrants, or at least reinforces them, while
securitization culturalizes them. Over the past few decades, the grounds
for the legitimization of inequalities have shifted. Ascriptive traits have
been complemented by the alleged cultural dispositions of immigrants
and the conviction that immigrants as individuals are responsible for their
own fate. Such categorizations start by distinguishing legitimate refugees
from nonlegitimate forced migrants. Another important trope is the alleged
illiberal predispositions of migrants and their inadaptability to modernity.
Bringing together market liberalization and culturalized securitization,
the current results could be read as Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic reloaded:
Politics and policies seem to reward specific types of migrants, exclude
the low- and nonperformers in the market and the traditionalists, and
reward those who perform well and espouse liberal attitudes. In brief, it is
a process of categorizing migrants into useful or dispensable (Faist, 2018,
Chapter 8).
These processes have not simply led to a displacement of class by status
politics. After all, class politics is also built along cultural boundaries, such
as working-class culture or bourgeois culture. Nonetheless, the heterogeneities that are politicized in the contemporary period have somewhat
shifted: cultural heterogeneities now stand at the forefront of debate and
contention. What can be observed is a trend toward both a de-politicized

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and a politicized development of heterogeneities in European public
spheres. As to trends toward de-politicization, multicultural group rights,
in particular, have been contentious and criticized as divisive. Over time,
multicultural language has been replaced by a semantic of diversity or
even super-diversity in market–liberal thinking and a semantic of threat
in nationalist-populist rhetoric. Given this background, it is possible that
market liberalization has also contributed to the decline of a rights-based
approach and the rise of a resource-based approach. With specific regard
to culture, we have seen a shift in policies from group rights to individual
resources, which can be tapped by enterprises. Diversity, at least in the
private sector, mobilizes the private resources of minority individuals and
looks for their most efficient allocation for profit- and rent-seeking. It is
somewhat different in the public sector, especially in the realm of policing
but also in the education and health sectors, in which service providers
seek more efficient ways of serving the public. In general, what we find
is a seminal shift from a rights-based to a resource-based approach in
dealing with cultural difference. Incidentally, this can be observed in the
transnational realm as well. For example, the World Bank has for years
propagated a resource-based approach to link migration to development in
casting migrants as development agents of their countries of origin through
financial remittances.
While a partial de-politicization of cultural heterogeneities through diversity management may help to achieve partial equalities in organizations,
multicultural policies are inextricably linked to national projects. After
all, such policies are meant to foster national integration and the social
integration of immigrants as minorities into national life. From all we know,
migration, migrants, and these policies are therefore likely to remain the
chief target of securitizing and xenophobic efforts. While the rhetorical
criticism of multiculturalism is ever mounting, existing multicultural policies are not reversed to the same extent. Quite to the contrary, the political
struggle is ongoing.
The politics of social inequalities in emigration states: processes in immigration countries, mostly those in the OECD world, have a mirror image in
countries of emigration. Through structural adjustment programmes, market
fundamentalism and liberalism have also been implemented in most of these
countries. Partly driven by the failure of market liberalization to garner sustained growth in quite a few countries, brain drain and brawn drain—the exit
of professionals, skilled workers, and others—have evolved as formidable
challenges to emigration states. New development agents have been constituted, as migration and development entered the agendas of international
and supranational organizations and national states in the global North. A
visible sign is the role of diasporas who have turned to development issues

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after the Cold War. Attention to the issues of brain drain, brain gain, or brain
circulation, and the role of diasporas in development has been heightened
by EU programmes, such as the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), which connect cooperation in the realm of control of migration
and asylum in exchange for development aid. It is within such policy initiatives that the asymmetries in the power to shape migration policies between
emigration and immigration states become blatantly visible. While the mobility of high-skilled migrants has been given prominent space in discourses
around migration and development, migrants on other skill levels have been
given short shrift and have entered the picture mostly as objects of control
and burdens to welfare states in immigration states.
In order to understand how emigration states deal with emigration, return
migration, remittances, and diaspora formation, we start from the notion of
the developmental state. Yet, beginning in 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. It is thus the transformation of the national development state
through a more important role played by the triad market–civil society–local
state which helps to elucidate the politics around emigration. With regard to
cultural issues, the notion of diaspora reigns paramount. On the one hand,
it is diaspora formation that characterizes emigration politics. On the other
hand, the diaspora is sometimes or quite often involved in home-country
politics, and sometimes seen as a competitor or threat to nation-building
and the consolidation of political power. And securitization becomes relevant because emigration has acted as a safety valve for authoritarian regimes
to get rid of their political opposition.
Only by placing the discussion in the wider context of the migration–development–control nexus is it possible to understand the new importance of
diaspora and transnational communities with respect to the transnationalized social question. The policy prominence of the role of migration for economic development since the early 2000s was fed by the portrayal of migrants
as development agents thanks to their resources—financial remittances. The
claims that migration is one of the central keys to remove structural constraints to economic growth, improve social well-being, and foster stronger
democracy were overblown, to say the least.
With respect to civil society, the term diaspora has experienced a renaissance. Diaspora organizations certainly are influenced by and often skillfully
employ global meta-norms and slogans such as “a nation for each people,”
democracy, human rights, and gender equality—and remain embedded in
local discourses (Baser, 2015). The political-economic and the security considerations also turned out to be relevant over time because the issues surrounding migration have become heavily culturalized. The change in the

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function of diasporas, from a tool of the superpowers in the Cold War to
development agents, and the change of policies of emigration countries to
woo emigrants abroad rekindled the ethnonational and sometimes religious
character of diaspora. In a way, the culturalized version of emigration in
diaspora has been a mirror image of neo-nationalist and nativist currents in
immigration countries.
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

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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. Like the threat
of nuclear war, the destruction of ecological foundations underlies life
chances. Thus this destruction preempts and precedes all other aspects of
the transnationalized social question. 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 (Sassen, 2014). The first generation
dealt with the vulnerability of specific groups such as the poor, women, and
children; the second with resilience, which supposedly helps to adapt to
climate change. These perspectives have occluded the finding that climate
change is part of a wider process of environmental destruction which
indeed has varied impacts on different categories of people with respect to
social inequalities (McLeman, Schade, & Faist, 2016). The first generation
of scholarship on climate change and migration, by using a mechanistic
approach to nature, seriously underestimated the adaptive capacities of
humans in the face of seminal ecological changes. The second generation of
scholarship focused on a particular kind of agency. The main protagonist has
been the resilient migrant who engages in successful adaptation to climate
change. This newer generation has propagated a mostly market–liberal
version of mobility—a mobile and docile migrant who acts in an anticipatory and preventative manner, implying reduced responsibility of the
state.
Climate change, or environmental destruction more generally, is intricately
related to globe-spanning political-economic inequalities which cause, drive,
and increase the destruction of human habitat. Each year of insufficient action
brings humankind closer to the limits of sustainability. The forerunner of
the latter is already visible in the increasing number of people who choose
to leave dead land or are compelled by force to do so. Taking a combined
nature-culture lens, the question is how migration in the wake of climate
change leaves intact deeper structures of social inequalities and reinforces
exclusionary mechanisms. Also of interest is how norm entrepreneurs have

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drawn attention to the dire fate of many migrants who engage in or are even
forced into climate-induced mobility—thus constituting the transnationalized socio-natural question.
With respect to changing perceptions of climate change, migration can be
placed in the context of general social transformations. Some analysts speak
of a “metabolic rift” (Foster, 1999). This term refers to ecological crisis tendencies under capitalism. Marx (1962 [1867], p. 192) theorized a rupture in
the metabolic interaction between nature and culture, which derives from
the mode of capitalist production and the growing rupture between urban
and rural regions. Marx held this rift to be irreconcilable with any kind of
sustainability. In the meantime, however, we have learned that while capitalism has remained a pervasive force it is “local at all points” (Latour, 1993,
p. 117). Conflicts over mitigation of and adaptation to climate change have
occurred over the past years, far away from spectacular world gatherings.
It has neither been (global) climate governance nor (local) adaptation but
rather climate conflicts that have been propelling some progress in addressing rampant carbonization. What needs to be determined in future research
is the combination of responses to climate change which encompasses both
exit and voice. It is well worth remembering that the urgent questions raised
by environmental degradation, given the tens of millions of people displaced
each year in their home countries, is not a scenario of the future but describes
the present. For example, there is evidence suggesting a link between global
warming and a greater risk of civil violence in much of sub-Saharan Africa,
possibly tied to variations in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (cf.
Burke, Shanker, Dykema, & Lobell, 2009, pp. 20670–20672; Hsiang, Meng, &
Crane, 2011).
CONCLUSION
Given the high political relevance of the transnationalized social question,
including the socio-natural question, it is important to ask how social scientists might intervene in public debates on social inequalities reaching across
borders. Academic and public debates often raise the question whether and
in what ways social scientific research may form a basis for rational political
decisions. While social science research indeed has implications for public
policies, the main proposition here is that such a question is ultimately misleading. While social scientists serve as scientific experts, advocates of certain
political and policy positions, or public intellectuals, and thus offer crucial
information for describing and understanding social inequalities and social
protection, one of the most important public functions of social scientists is
to offer concepts and interpretations that can guide political debates in the
public sphere.

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Seen in this way, the social sciences have a dual role (Lynd, 1939). On
the one hand, all the social sciences are engaged with scientific specializations, also across disciplines, to be able to treat topics in a systematic
and methodical way. On the other hand, it is necessary to connect these
specialized knowledge(s) with larger issues concerning the common good.
It is therefore of utmost importance to devote more attention to connecting
specialized knowledge to questions of what constitutes common goods.
Such an approach could help reinvigorate the vital link between insight into
the actual, aided by systematic research, and imagination of the possible.
Structures of society are made and imagined rather than just existing: the
social world is a created world. The task is to explain the ascendance of the
present arrangements and underlying assumptions in a way that dissociates
explaining processes and outcomes from vindicating their necessity. This
goal is most assuredly a first element of any ambition to advance the public
role of social science in addressing the transnationalized social question. In
the current context, this means that the shape-shifting of the social question
from class-dominated political conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries to a more complex assemblage of heterogeneities, including social
class, is traced systematically in order to explore venues of possible change.
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Thomas Faist (PhD, New School for Social Research) is a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University. His fields of interest are transnational relations,
cross-border migration, citizenship, and social policy. He held visiting
appointments at Malmö University and the University of Toronto. Among
the books he (co-)authored are The Volume and Dynamics of International
Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (2000), Beyond a Border: The Causes
and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration (2010); Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods (2010), Migration, Development, and
Transnationalization: A Critical Stance (2011), Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Social Science Research Methodologies in Transition (2012), Disentangling

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Migration and Climate Change (2013), and Environmental Migration and Social
Inequalities (2016). His forthcoming book is entitled The Transnationalized
Social Question: Migration and the Politics of Inequalities in the 21st Century. He
is currently co-directing research projects on social positioning of migrants
in the EU, and on international students from China and Japan in Germany.
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The Transnationalized Social
Question: Migration and Social
Inequalities
THOMAS FAIST

Abstract

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The social question is back. Yet today’s social question is not primarily between labor
and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global
South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking
a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain
ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of
the cross-border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration
for social inequalities within national states. In earlier periods class differences dominated political conflicts, and while class has always been crisscrossed by manifold
heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language;
it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened over the past decades.

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INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION AS THE TRANSNATIONALIZED
SOCIAL QUESTION
On a global scale, distress and social instability today are reminiscent of
the living conditions that prevailed through a large part of the nineteenth
century in Europe. At that time the social question was the central subject
of volatile political conflicts between the ruling classes and working-class
movements. From the late nineteenth century onward, the social question
was nationalized in the welfare states of the global North which sought
a class compromise via redistribution of goods, whereas social protection
beyond the national welfare state is found mostly in soft law in the form of
social standards (Faist, 2009). We now may be on the verge of a new social
conflict, again on a transnational scale, but characterized more than ever
by manifold boundaries—such as those between capital and labor, North
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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and South, developed and underdeveloped or developing countries, or
those in favor of increased globalization against those advocating national
solutions.
The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the
global South and the global North and also revolves around cultural heterogeneities. A proliferation of political groupings and NGOs rally across
national borders in support of various campaigns such as environmental concerns, human rights, and women’s issues, Christian, Hindu, or Islamic fundamentalism, migration, and food sovereignty, but also resistance to growing
cultural diversity and increasing mobility of goods, services, and persons
across the borders of national states. The nexus of South–North migration
and cultural conflicts is no coincidence, as cross-border migration from South
to North not only raises economic issues, such as productivity and labor
market segmentation (Schierup, Munck, Likić-Brborić, & Neergaard, 2015)
but also has been part of the constitution of cultural conflicts around “us”
versus “them.” Migration thus has been one of the central fields in which the
solution of the old social question in the frame of the national welfare state
has been called into question, hence the term “transnationalized social question.” One of the core questions for the social sciences, therefore, is: How is
cross-border migration constituted as the social question of our times? This
general question can be specified into various sub-questions to be addressed
in this essay: Has there been a move from political voice to territorial exit from
the nineteenth to the twenty-first century? What kinds of social inequalities
are created in the migratory process and how? How does social protection
across borders ameliorate and reproduce inequalities? How have immigration states in Europe shifted migration control to the countries of origin and
transit through externalization? How are class and cultural conflicts constituted in the processes of postmigration in immigration and emigration
states? Do we need to expand the social question to a socio-natural question to understand the nexus between environmental destruction and migration in the current geological period provisionally called the Anthropocene? In
answering these questions we need to uncover the social mechanisms driving
the (re)production of social inequalities.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
The social question then and now: From voice to exit? With respect to global
income inequalities, class in the Marxian sense accounted for more than
half of the variance in the late nineteenth century, and location (country)
for a minor fraction only. The situation has almost reversed more than a
hundred years later when most of the variance was explained by location
and no longer by class (Milanovic, 2016; cf. Bourguignon & Morrisson,

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2002). Therefore, the question arises whether exit in the form of cross-border
migration has replaced voice in the form of political mobilization as a
dominant strategy to deal with the unequal distribution of life chances. At
the very least, exit in the form of migration is a significant strategy on the
microscale in addition to collective strategies such as welfare states and
global redistribution on the macro level (Korzeniewicz & Moran, 2009).
Four differences between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries can be
discerned. First, national welfare states developed in response to political
struggles around the old social question between capital and labor. Whereas
economic exchange for increased productivity and overall wealth may favor
open borders, the political logic of the welfare state requires social closure
toward noncitizens (Freeman, 1986). This is so because open borders would
pit migrants against natives in competition for valuable goods, such as
employment, housing, and education. Moreover, such conflicts over the
distribution of goods are usually complemented by a second line of conflict
around cultural differences, between the idea of national homogeneity, on
the one hand, and claims toward cultural pluralism and autonomy on the
part of migrants and other minorities on the other hand. Second, we have
seen the gradual emergence of sophisticated state migration control, making
it possible not only to guard national borders but extend external borders
into regions of transit and origin (externalization and remote control),
and internal borders within immigration states. Third, there has been an
ever-growing political relevance of cultural heterogeneities going beyond
class. In Europe, this general trend is particularly visible in the politicization
of differences such as religion (“we” vs the Muslims). Fourth, whereas
in the nineteenth century socialist and anarchist theories guided social
movements, such as the labor movement in the northwest of Europe, the
situation is much more pluralistic nowadays. Today, there is no identifiably
coherent theory around the social question which would be able to mobilize
politically around a plural set of heterogeneities.
Overall, the transnationalization of cross-border flows and the concomitant process of increasing cultural diversity have challenged the welfare
state—which rests on nationally bounded solidarity and reciprocity and
class compromise. In the contemporary period, the recognition of gender,
ethnicity, religion, and related heterogeneities cannot be meaningfully regulated by the classical welfare state, not least because social transformation
has resulted in shifting the risks for life chances from groups to individuals
(Beck, 1992). It is the regulatory and not the redistributive welfare state
which is active in the field of heterogeneities. Ironically, the European Union
(EU) may contribute even further to this development since ambitious issues
of thick understandings of equality and solidarity take a back seat while
thin conceptions dominate the discussions on social policy (Münch, 2012).

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The nexus of cross-border migration and social inequalities raises two major
issues. The first concerns how social inequalities affect opportunities for
cross-border migration for different socioeconomic groups. The second issue
is, conversely, how the outcomes of migration affect social inequalities in
life chances in the countries of emigration and the countries of immigration.
Available research suggests that cross-border migration constitutes a path
to upward social mobility for migrants, and—at the same time—that such
processes tend to reinforce inequalities on a deeper level (Faist, 2016). The
term “durable inequalities” (Tilly, 1998) refers to unequal power relations
and inequalities derived from categorizations of heterogeneities along
gender, ethnicity, religion, caste, and class, none of which is fundamentally
transformed in emigration and immigration regions and in transnational
social spaces. In addition, new inequalities emerge, such as those arising as a
consequence of the growth of subcontracting in labor markets of destination
regions. As a consequence, cross-border migration reflects the importance
of location and of membership as an important proxy for life chances.
Migration, social protection, and the (re)production of inequalities: examining
social protection in the context of migration is particularly important
because it links the disparate, fragmented social spaces of unequal life
chances and social protection across the world. The organization of social
protection across borders includes the assemblages of social protection,
encompassing programmes by the state and civil society organizations,
but also social protection in kinship groups. It also concerns the issue
of how to conceptualize social protection with respect to human rights.
Essential to an understanding of the current status of cross-border social
protection is the exploration of the elements of global governance and
existing transnational social standards in the realm of migration. On the
national level, as Marshall (1992 [1949]) pointed out long ago, social rights
and, above all, social citizenship are important for legitimizing social
inequalities arising out of capitalist markets. For transnational social spaces,
there is no similar normative reference frame. The International Labor
Organization (ILO) conventions 97 and 143 and other social and human
rights conventions suffer from their nonbinding character. Thus, it does
not make sense to speak of transnational (social) citizenship—except in
the sense of overlapping national citizenships, namely dual citizenship, in
which case citizens are, in principle, able to access (quasi-)full rights in both
countries. Nor is it meaningful to speak of global or world citizenship in an
institutional sense although such a concept may guide mobilization favoring
cross-border norms. World citizenship is simply nonexistent de facto or
de jure because, apart from exceptions such as claims to compensation for
land loss in the case of development projects like dam-building, only soft
law and social standards in international conventions pertain, and these

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cannot be claimed successfully on a regular basis by migrants themselves.
Transnationalized social protection and concomitant social inequalities are
addressed on various levels, with national states as well as international
organizations or local municipalities playing a role—in addition to the
other dimensions of social organization, namely market, community, and
family. Global criteria and norms, such as international conventions, and a
global horizon of thinking as a cognitive schema, serve as reference points
for agents who strive for political change in this area (Cabrera, 2011) by
pointing, for example, to a growing public awareness across the globe
concerning transnational exchange, interdependence, and dependencies
(Furia, 2005).
While cross-border social protection strategies can substantially improve
the livelihoods of individuals or families and the opportunities for social
protection, for example, through remittances for the education or healthcare
of other family members, fundamental inequalities between the regions of
origin and the target regions but also within origin groups tend to persist.
Institutionally embedded forms of public social protection in the regions of
origin are often exposed to additional pressures, for instance, through the exit
of skilled workers. New inequalities arise in the course of cross-border migration, for example, between households in the regions of origin that receive
remittances and those that do not, or in the gender-specific division of labor
in the immigration regions, where the emancipation of women in the immigration countries results in women from peripheral countries taking over the
vacant positions for care work in the household (Nakano Glen, 1992). Also,
existing social protection systems in the countries of origin may be disrupted
by remittances and demographic decline.
Research has yielded the insight that migrants engage in comparative
social positioning between countries of origin and destination, between
migrant groups, and within their own groups (Faist, Bilecen, Barglowski,
& Sienkiewicz, 2015). The subjective significance and attribution of social
inequalities are worth examining in detail because the transnationalized
social question is conceivable only against the background of social inequalities that are deemed to be normatively unjustifiable. From an empirical
point of view, the criteria for the assessment of inequalities are usually
oriented to norms that are relational and allow comparisons with categories
of people who are, in social terms, not too far removed from each other. Also,
sometimes comparisons of selected elements of social security systems,
such as healthcare or old age pensions, become relevant. The interesting
question is what categories of people and which norms are considered
relevant by the participating actors in the respective labor and social
protection organizations and political arenas. In a transnational perspective, inequalities can be regarded as borderless: While state borders, and

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especially the legal and political boundaries of membership and affiliation,
are constitutive of a person’s opportunities in life, the social, cultural, and
economic boundaries are not necessarily congruent with the daily realities
of cross-border workers.
Externalization and internalization of social inequalities in cross-border migration: understanding the politics of inequalities around migration necessitates
an analysis of the transnational architecture of migration control. The
transnationalized social question finds its mirror image in immigration and
emigration contexts. In the global North, it is the welfare state that promises
protection from unfettered global economic competition in the immigration
states, and the developmental (national) state in the global South often serves
as a functional equivalent. 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 center
stage. Both the migration–control nexus and the migration–development
nexus have increasingly merged into a development–migration–control
nexus: resources for development cooperation are connected by the donors
to the willingness of the receivers to cooperate on matters of migration
control (Gaibazzi, Dünnwald, & Bellagamba, 2016). The control part of the
nexus has resulted in externalization as well as internalization, that is, the
securitization of control not only as a form of outsourcing and thus remote
control but also control within national states. Borders have moved both
outward and inward. Detection, detention, and deportation are among the
most visible control practices in many immigration states nowadays. In
general, immigration regulations and asylum procedures (e.g., for refugees
who have a subsidiary status and therefore have to return to countries
of origin upon the cessation of violence) have made family reunification
increasingly difficult.
In the end, externalization and internalization are inextricably connected.
Since much of border politics and policies by states can be seen as a response
to threatened identities and security, one may ask about the function of
borders beyond controlling migrants. Border walls and externalization
efforts may be a clue that state control is one of the most visible areas of
transnationalization in which national states and supranational entities
such as the EU can show competence by directly addressing the volume of
transactions across borders. Such policies primarily fulfill a role of symbolic
bordering, by providing a reassuring image of security to a population
whose job opportunities have partly migrated elsewhere or whose welfare
states have been transformed and sometimes even removed from democratic
ownership. There is no reliable empirical evidence that migrants constitute
competitors to jobs or—overall—a burden on welfare states in the global

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North (Kuş, 2018). The externalization and internationalization of border
control may be more about the consequences of societal transformation than
about migrants per se.
The politics of social inequalities in immigration states: politics around migration and inequalities runs along two major lines, economic divisions, and
cultural ones. With respect to economic divisions, they lie between market
liberalization in the competition state and the de-commodification of labor as
part of the welfare paradox: Economic openness toward capital transfer is in
tension with political closure toward migrants. It is the dichotomy of the competition state versus the welfare state. In the cultural realm, the contention
occurs over the rights revolution versus 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 against the efforts to control
borders and cultural boundaries. Threat perceptions often lead to a securitization of migration. It is a juxtaposition of the multicultural state and the rule
of law on the one hand and the democratic-national state on the other hand.
Economic divisions along class lines structure the politicization of cultural
heterogeneities.
Market liberalization, securitization, and the rights revolution have formed
a triad that constitutes the main pillars of the dynamics of the politics of
(in)equalities and integration. In sum, market liberalization serves as a basis
for class distinctions among migrants, or at least reinforces them, while
securitization culturalizes them. Over the past few decades, the grounds
for the legitimization of inequalities have shifted. Ascriptive traits have
been complemented by the alleged cultural dispositions of immigrants
and the conviction that immigrants as individuals are responsible for their
own fate. Such categorizations start by distinguishing legitimate refugees
from nonlegitimate forced migrants. Another important trope is the alleged
illiberal predispositions of migrants and their inadaptability to modernity.
Bringing together market liberalization and culturalized securitization,
the current results could be read as Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic reloaded:
Politics and policies seem to reward specific types of migrants, exclude
the low- and nonperformers in the market and the traditionalists, and
reward those who perform well and espouse liberal attitudes. In brief, it is
a process of categorizing migrants into useful or dispensable (Faist, 2018,
Chapter 8).
These processes have not simply led to a displacement of class by status
politics. After all, class politics is also built along cultural boundaries, such
as working-class culture or bourgeois culture. Nonetheless, the heterogeneities that are politicized in the contemporary period have somewhat
shifted: cultural heterogeneities now stand at the forefront of debate and
contention. What can be observed is a trend toward both a de-politicized

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and a politicized development of heterogeneities in European public
spheres. As to trends toward de-politicization, multicultural group rights,
in particular, have been contentious and criticized as divisive. Over time,
multicultural language has been replaced by a semantic of diversity or
even super-diversity in market–liberal thinking and a semantic of threat
in nationalist-populist rhetoric. Given this background, it is possible that
market liberalization has also contributed to the decline of a rights-based
approach and the rise of a resource-based approach. With specific regard
to culture, we have seen a shift in policies from group rights to individual
resources, which can be tapped by enterprises. Diversity, at least in the
private sector, mobilizes the private resources of minority individuals and
looks for their most efficient allocation for profit- and rent-seeking. It is
somewhat different in the public sector, especially in the realm of policing
but also in the education and health sectors, in which service providers
seek more efficient ways of serving the public. In general, what we find
is a seminal shift from a rights-based to a resource-based approach in
dealing with cultural difference. Incidentally, this can be observed in the
transnational realm as well. For example, the World Bank has for years
propagated a resource-based approach to link migration to development in
casting migrants as development agents of their countries of origin through
financial remittances.
While a partial de-politicization of cultural heterogeneities through diversity management may help to achieve partial equalities in organizations,
multicultural policies are inextricably linked to national projects. After
all, such policies are meant to foster national integration and the social
integration of immigrants as minorities into national life. From all we know,
migration, migrants, and these policies are therefore likely to remain the
chief target of securitizing and xenophobic efforts. While the rhetorical
criticism of multiculturalism is ever mounting, existing multicultural policies are not reversed to the same extent. Quite to the contrary, the political
struggle is ongoing.
The politics of social inequalities in emigration states: processes in immigration countries, mostly those in the OECD world, have a mirror image in
countries of emigration. Through structural adjustment programmes, market
fundamentalism and liberalism have also been implemented in most of these
countries. Partly driven by the failure of market liberalization to garner sustained growth in quite a few countries, brain drain and brawn drain—the exit
of professionals, skilled workers, and others—have evolved as formidable
challenges to emigration states. New development agents have been constituted, as migration and development entered the agendas of international
and supranational organizations and national states in the global North. A
visible sign is the role of diasporas who have turned to development issues

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after the Cold War. Attention to the issues of brain drain, brain gain, or brain
circulation, and the role of diasporas in development has been heightened
by EU programmes, such as the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), which connect cooperation in the realm of control of migration
and asylum in exchange for development aid. It is within such policy initiatives that the asymmetries in the power to shape migration policies between
emigration and immigration states become blatantly visible. While the mobility of high-skilled migrants has been given prominent space in discourses
around migration and development, migrants on other skill levels have been
given short shrift and have entered the picture mostly as objects of control
and burdens to welfare states in immigration states.
In order to understand how emigration states deal with emigration, return
migration, remittances, and diaspora formation, we start from the notion of
the developmental state. Yet, beginning in 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. It is thus the transformation of the national development state
through a more important role played by the triad market–civil society–local
state which helps to elucidate the politics around emigration. With regard to
cultural issues, the notion of diaspora reigns paramount. On the one hand,
it is diaspora formation that characterizes emigration politics. On the other
hand, the diaspora is sometimes or quite often involved in home-country
politics, and sometimes seen as a competitor or threat to nation-building
and the consolidation of political power. And securitization becomes relevant because emigration has acted as a safety valve for authoritarian regimes
to get rid of their political opposition.
Only by placing the discussion in the wider context of the migration–development–control nexus is it possible to understand the new importance of
diaspora and transnational communities with respect to the transnationalized social question. The policy prominence of the role of migration for economic development since the early 2000s was fed by the portrayal of migrants
as development agents thanks to their resources—financial remittances. The
claims that migration is one of the central keys to remove structural constraints to economic growth, improve social well-being, and foster stronger
democracy were overblown, to say the least.
With respect to civil society, the term diaspora has experienced a renaissance. Diaspora organizations certainly are influenced by and often skillfully
employ global meta-norms and slogans such as “a nation for each people,”
democracy, human rights, and gender equality—and remain embedded in
local discourses (Baser, 2015). The political-economic and the security considerations also turned out to be relevant over time because the issues surrounding migration have become heavily culturalized. The change in the

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function of diasporas, from a tool of the superpowers in the Cold War to
development agents, and the change of policies of emigration countries to
woo emigrants abroad rekindled the ethnonational and sometimes religious
character of diaspora. In a way, the culturalized version of emigration in
diaspora has been a mirror image of neo-nationalist and nativist currents in
immigration countries.
DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

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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. Like the threat
of nuclear war, the destruction of ecological foundations underlies life
chances. Thus this destruction preempts and precedes all other aspects of
the transnationalized social question. 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 (Sassen, 2014). The first generation
dealt with the vulnerability of specific groups such as the poor, women, and
children; the second with resilience, which supposedly helps to adapt to
climate change. These perspectives have occluded the finding that climate
change is part of a wider process of environmental destruction which
indeed has varied impacts on different categories of people with respect to
social inequalities (McLeman, Schade, & Faist, 2016). The first generation
of scholarship on climate change and migration, by using a mechanistic
approach to nature, seriously underestimated the adaptive capacities of
humans in the face of seminal ecological changes. The second generation of
scholarship focused on a particular kind of agency. The main protagonist has
been the resilient migrant who engages in successful adaptation to climate
change. This newer generation has propagated a mostly market–liberal
version of mobility—a mobile and docile migrant who acts in an anticipatory and preventative manner, implying reduced responsibility of the
state.
Climate change, or environmental destruction more generally, is intricately
related to globe-spanning political-economic inequalities which cause, drive,
and increase the destruction of human habitat. Each year of insufficient action
brings humankind closer to the limits of sustainability. The forerunner of
the latter is already visible in the increasing number of people who choose
to leave dead land or are compelled by force to do so. Taking a combined
nature-culture lens, the question is how migration in the wake of climate
change leaves intact deeper structures of social inequalities and reinforces
exclusionary mechanisms. Also of interest is how norm entrepreneurs have

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drawn attention to the dire fate of many migrants who engage in or are even
forced into climate-induced mobility—thus constituting the transnationalized socio-natural question.
With respect to changing perceptions of climate change, migration can be
placed in the context of general social transformations. Some analysts speak
of a “metabolic rift” (Foster, 1999). This term refers to ecological crisis tendencies under capitalism. Marx (1962 [1867], p. 192) theorized a rupture in
the metabolic interaction between nature and culture, which derives from
the mode of capitalist production and the growing rupture between urban
and rural regions. Marx held this rift to be irreconcilable with any kind of
sustainability. In the meantime, however, we have learned that while capitalism has remained a pervasive force it is “local at all points” (Latour, 1993,
p. 117). Conflicts over mitigation of and adaptation to climate change have
occurred over the past years, far away from spectacular world gatherings.
It has neither been (global) climate governance nor (local) adaptation but
rather climate conflicts that have been propelling some progress in addressing rampant carbonization. What needs to be determined in future research
is the combination of responses to climate change which encompasses both
exit and voice. It is well worth remembering that the urgent questions raised
by environmental degradation, given the tens of millions of people displaced
each year in their home countries, is not a scenario of the future but describes
the present. For example, there is evidence suggesting a link between global
warming and a greater risk of civil violence in much of sub-Saharan Africa,
possibly tied to variations in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (cf.
Burke, Shanker, Dykema, & Lobell, 2009, pp. 20670–20672; Hsiang, Meng, &
Crane, 2011).
CONCLUSION
Given the high political relevance of the transnationalized social question,
including the socio-natural question, it is important to ask how social scientists might intervene in public debates on social inequalities reaching across
borders. Academic and public debates often raise the question whether and
in what ways social scientific research may form a basis for rational political
decisions. While social science research indeed has implications for public
policies, the main proposition here is that such a question is ultimately misleading. While social scientists serve as scientific experts, advocates of certain
political and policy positions, or public intellectuals, and thus offer crucial
information for describing and understanding social inequalities and social
protection, one of the most important public functions of social scientists is
to offer concepts and interpretations that can guide political debates in the
public sphere.

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Seen in this way, the social sciences have a dual role (Lynd, 1939). On
the one hand, all the social sciences are engaged with scientific specializations, also across disciplines, to be able to treat topics in a systematic
and methodical way. On the other hand, it is necessary to connect these
specialized knowledge(s) with larger issues concerning the common good.
It is therefore of utmost importance to devote more attention to connecting
specialized knowledge to questions of what constitutes common goods.
Such an approach could help reinvigorate the vital link between insight into
the actual, aided by systematic research, and imagination of the possible.
Structures of society are made and imagined rather than just existing: the
social world is a created world. The task is to explain the ascendance of the
present arrangements and underlying assumptions in a way that dissociates
explaining processes and outcomes from vindicating their necessity. This
goal is most assuredly a first element of any ambition to advance the public
role of social science in addressing the transnationalized social question. In
the current context, this means that the shape-shifting of the social question
from class-dominated political conflicts of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries to a more complex assemblage of heterogeneities, including social
class, is traced systematically in order to explore venues of possible change.
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Thomas Faist (PhD, New School for Social Research) is a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University. His fields of interest are transnational relations,
cross-border migration, citizenship, and social policy. He held visiting
appointments at Malmö University and the University of Toronto. Among
the books he (co-)authored are The Volume and Dynamics of International
Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (2000), Beyond a Border: The Causes
and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration (2010); Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods (2010), Migration, Development, and
Transnationalization: A Critical Stance (2011), Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Social Science Research Methodologies in Transition (2012), Disentangling

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Migration and Climate Change (2013), and Environmental Migration and Social
Inequalities (2016). His forthcoming book is entitled The Transnationalized
Social Question: Migration and the Politics of Inequalities in the 21st Century. He
is currently co-directing research projects on social positioning of migrants
in the EU, and on international students from China and Japan in Germany.
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