1st Edition

Transnationalizing Inequalities in Europe Sociocultural Boundaries, Assemblages and Regimes of Intersection

By Anna Amelina Copyright 2017
    208 Pages
    by Routledge

    218 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Unequal life-chances became a key feature of cross-border migration to, and within, the enlarged Europe. Combining transnational, intersectional and cultural-sociological perspectives, this book develops a conceptual tool to analyse patterns, contexts and mechanisms of these cross-border inequalities.



    This book synthesizes the theories of social boundaries and of intersectionality, approaching cross-border relations as socially generated and as an inherent element of contemporary social inequalities. It analyses the mechanisms of cross-border inequalities as ‘regimes of intersection’ relating spatialized cross-border inequalities to other types of unequal social relations (in terms of gender, ethnicity/race, class etc.). The conceptual arguments are supported by empirical research on cross-border migration in Europe: migration of scientists and care workers between Ukraine and Germany.



    This book integrates the analysis of space – including cross-border categories of global and transnational – into intersectionally-informed studies of social inequalities. Broadly, it will appeal to scholars and students in the areas of sociology, political sciences, social anthropology and social geography. In particular, it will interest researchers concerned with transnational and global social inequalities, the interplay of the categories ‘gender’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘class’ on the one hand and global and transnational relations on the other, theories of space and society, and migration and mobility in Europe.

    1. Transnational Capitalist Class, Transnational Elites and Global Precariat? Facing Cross-Border Inequalities



    Part I: From the Hegemony of the National to the Hegemony of an (In-)Equality Discourse



    2. Predicaments of Migration Studies on Social Inequalities: The Current State of the Research on the National, Global and Transnational Scales



    3. Multiple Inequalities as Sociocultural Boundaries: Combining Intersectional Theory with the Sociology of Social Boundaries



    4. Where to Locate Sociocultural Boundaries? Social Inequalities and Their Contexts



    5. From Categorical Distinctions to Sociocultural Boundaries: On the Hegemonic (In-)Equality Project and Regimes of Intersection



    Part II: Transnationalizing Inequalities in Europe: The Making of Hierarchies within Assemblages



    6. The Emergence of a New Migration System in an Enlarged Europe and the Narratives of Transnationalized Inequalities



    7. Multiple Professional Commitments of Mobile Scientists as a Resource of Hierarchization: On Transnationalized Boundaries within the Assemblage of Science



    8. Female Migrant Care Workers as Prisoners of Multiple Obligations? Transnationalized Boundaries Within the Assemblage of Care 8.1 Introduction: Interrogating the Concept of Global Precariat



    9. Writing Spatialized Cross-Border Inequality

    Biography

    Anna Amelina is Junior Professor of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Transnationalizing Inequalities in Europe is a highly original volume that builds on theories of globalization, transnationalization, spatialization, boundaries, and intersectionality to examine cross-border social inequalities. Whilst focused on transnational migration, mobility, and post-migration settlement, and using case studies between Ukraine and Germany, the book has much wider application elsewhere, and much wider relevance for the many other transnational processes. As such, and in raising key practical questions for doing transnational research, it should have a strong impact as a landmark text.

    Jeff Hearn, Örebro University, Sweden; Hanken School of Economics, Finland; University of Huddersfield, UK; author of Men of the World

    Transnationalizing Inequalities offers its readers an original and highly productive dialogue between cultural sociology, intersectional theory and poststructuralist thought. It uses this conversation to make new sense of pressing questions of inequality across Europe’s fluid borders. Amelina’s thinking is as sharp as the inequalities she maps, and as subtle as some of the mechanisms of power she uncovers.

    Professor William Walters, Department of Political Science & Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Carleton University, Canada

    Theorists of social inequality have often been criticized for their inability to overcome methodological nationalism, an approach that treats the nation state as most important category of analysis. Anna Amelina’s book is a pioneering, outstanding work which takes up these challenges and presents new theoretical tools for investigating the transnationalization of social inequalities in the 21st century from an intersectional perspective. A must read for students and scholars of migration- gender- and social inequality studies.

    Helma Lutz, Goethe University Frankfurt, Author of ‘The New Maids. Transnational Wo