Research Program

MOBILITY, CULTURE and SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Research topics

Mobility, Culture and Social Inequality: Global Flows and Local Arenas

Basic Perspective: Global Flows and Local Arenas

This cluster brings together five themes which are characterized by a common heuristic perspective to analyze major contemporary issues in social science. The main heuristic perspective is the local manifestation of global developments. Basically, the cluster seeks to analyze, in different contexts and by addressing different topics, how globalization ‘hits the ground.’ The contexts of the analysis vary from cities in advanced economies to rural areas in economic more peripheral areas. The title of the cluster: mobility, culture and social inequality addresses the cluster’s main topics.

Research objectives

As it comes to globalization, we have now entered into a new round of research and theorizing. Grand narratives characterized the first phase, in the sense develping and debating encompassing visions. Whereas in the stage of the grand narratives about globalization, scientific standpoints were illustrated rather than empirically researched, we have now entered a stage in which the manifestations of globalization – the global flows of capital, commodities, people and information – are analyzed in a precise manner in concrete geographical contexts and pertaining to different topics. The cluster’s point of departure is to consider an increasingly interconnected world due to global flows. This basic assumption steers our research objectives:

How does this increased interconnectivity manifest itself in cities in the advanced economies? Does it mirror the inequalities of the past that were visible only at the level of continents?

How does this increased interconnectivity manifest itself in the Global South?  Specifically, in areas that are economically and culturally incorporated in international networks, in contrast to areas – sometimes in the same country, region or city – which, in terms of connectivity, are considered ‘black holes’ where poverty reigns?

Given these broad research objectives, the cluster focuses beyond advanced economies and addresses developments in labor, poverty, and migration in Asia.

Research focus

Basically, the cluster considers local manifestations of global developments in terms of inequality, lifestyles, cultures and identity formation, social cohesion and social conflict, economic opportunity and survival strategies.

It is important to note that the global manifestations considered – long distance migration, new international divisions of labor, cultural transformations – are conceived of as being brought about by specific forms of ‘agency’ and are not some sort of natural phenomena. The social groups, categories and institutions that are confronted in different contexts – countries, regions, cities, neighborhoods – with those developments are not passive or powerless actors that merely react in order to survive.

These themes have four characteristics in common. First, they focus on large cities and rural areas as strategic arenas to study the consequences of major social, economic and cultural changes. Second, within all the themes methodological nationalism is challenged. To understand major transformations in cities, it is important to analyze transnational processes that go beyond the nation-state and local states. Third, they combine fundamental, academic. and policy-oriented research. A major aim of the themes is to inspire political discourse and policy making and to contribute to the rationality of local, national, and trans-national social policy. Fourth, the boundaries between the themes are permeable, and scholars are encouraged, if possible, to participate in more than one thematic field.

 

 

Liquid Migration

With the increasing mobility of people, migration is reshaping societies all over the world. The effects of migration are studied in a number of ways within the cluster:

Research is conducted into migration in Asia, particularly as the consequence of labor market dynamics. The research focuses on flows of poor people and goods across international borders – movements that are not allowed by states but are not organized crime either. States declare these practices illegal and yet states themselves are often involved in them. This research analyzes forms of globalization-from-below, transnational practices that are considered acceptable (licit) by participants but are often illegal in a formal sense. Particular focus is placed on participants’ identities and notions of (il)legality and (il)licitness.

To a lesser degree than in the past, work and wages are formalized in economic and political arrangements, with or without intervention by public authorities or other public institutions. There is a strong tendency towards informalization – including (in outsiders´ eyes) defective regulations, small-scale activities, opacity, fluidity, etc. – that should not only be seen as an economic phenomenon, but that should also be understood as a general societal issue. The consequences of this trend are ambiguous. On the one hand it creates possibilities for social improvement (especially for capital owners), but on the other hand it pushes a large part of the laboring population (with little or no recognized skills) into poverty. Mechanisms of social inclusion and exclusion are therefore a priority.

Cities in the West have also witnessed an influx of strangers and thus taken on ethnically and culturally-mixed urban populations. This has profoundly affected the labor markets and formation of social identities in these contexts. As such, these effects are connected to two major processes: individualization and globalization. These processes underlie many of the most pressing contemporary social problems, such as problems of legal and illegal immigration, problems of integration and identity formation of ethnic minorities, problems of social exclusion and poverty, and widespread cultural and political discontent.

Although international migration, relocation of industrial jobs to foreign countries, and concentration of post-industrial ones in the Netherlands have clearly impacted urban labor markets, it is unclear how exactly these processes have changed urban inequality. For example, have these processes had a different impact in more industrial and more postindustrial urban economies (think of, respectively, Rotterdam and Amsterdam in the Dutch case). What consequences does welfare state retrenchment have for economically vulnerable groups like poorly-educated ethnic minorities – in particular undocumented immigrants, who lack entitlement to welfare state provisions? If educational credentials have become more important under post-Fordism, doesn’t this create a (semi-)permanent urban underclass of “new obsoletes” from which escape is virtually impossible? If so, do ethnic minority groups in particular suffer from these processes? Why? To what extent and through which channels (ethnic entrepreneurship, education and training, etcetera) does upward mobility take place among these allochthonous groups as compared to the autochthonous Dutch?

 

Transnational Cultural Industry

Within this theme the production, distribution and reception of culture is studied in relation to globalization, national identity, social inequality, cultural insecurity and new cultural collectivities. ‘Culture’ in this context refers to all symbolic meanings produced by various specialists, comprising ‘high’ as well as ‘popular’ culture, media messages, fashion, design, and advertising. In particular, culture is studied from a comparative and historical perspective in which cultural differences and cultural change relate to wider social processes.

While transnational cultural flows have grown continuously in volume, intensity and speed after (at least) the Second World War, national frameworks continue their relevance for the production, distribution and reception of cultural goods. Guiding common research question include, how do transnational cultural flows and the national cultural field interplay, and how do such flows impact definitions of national identity? On the production side, through research on changing media landscapes, changing power relations between different groups and organizations in the cultural field are considered. On the reception side, cultural taste preferences and their significance for status distinctions is researched.

In a globalized world, “who we are” is no longer understood as a “given” but has become a problem; a problem that invites reflexivity and evokes conflict and boundary negotiation. All of this is assumed to have led to virtually permanent insecurities about personal identities, almost unending agonies of choice, and restless quests for meaning, quality of life, and happiness. What are the origins, manifestations and consequences of the new cultural insecurities? Moreover, are we witnessing the emergence of new “post-traditional” cultures and identities and, if so, how do these become socially accepted and provide meaning and community? Now that traditional guidelines on “who to be” and “how to act” are no longer taken for granted, the research focuses on how individuals construct their personal biographies and identities. The point of departure is that these processes do not occur in a social and cultural vacuum, but are strongly and increasingly mediated by markets and media. It is vital, from this perspective, to study the roles of popular culture, the media, and the market in constructing selves and buying lifestyles. How precisely do these individualized communities – such as social network sites like Hyves, online computer games and virtual worlds like Second Life – reflect and shape individual and collective identities?

 

Culturalization of Citizenship

Over the last decades, the idea of national and mono-cultural citizenship has fractured. First, the cultural and ethnic diversity of citizens of the same country destabilized the mono-cultural ideal. More and more citizens have pluri-national loyalties and feelings of belonging. Secondly, people experience citizenship more often on the local rather than the national scale. Culturalization of national citizenship took place in reaction to these ‘glocalizing’ tendencies. Two bifurcating tendencies, one towards transnationalization, the other towards localization, contribute to a culturalization of citizenship.

Marked differences exist in this culturalization at the national level and the local level. At the local level, the increasing heterogeneity of the population causes tensions in neighborhoods and in a number of public institutions. This produces polarization on the basis of cultural identities. At the national level, in the heated discussions about immigration, integration, assimilation, and the lack of social cohesion in multicultural societies, the notion of feeling at home pops up. These debates no longer concentrate on questioning how citizenship relates to rights and duties, but on the emotions that people attach to the neighborhood and the nation state.

The culturalization of citizenship comes with new framing and feeling rules. Belonging and feeling at home have become a requirement. Particularly at the national level, the state develops ‘feeling rules’ and applies them to migrants to demonstrate feelings of attachment, belonging, connection, and loyalty to their new country. At the same time, the state allows autochthonous citizens the space for a range of feelings concerning migration and migrants, including negative ones. In contrast, local ‘feeling rules’ towards immigrants often demand somewhat more ambivalent or even positive emotions such as empathy and respect.

 

Insecurity in relation to care and labour

Research is conducted into which societal changes and changes in individual life patterns have consequences for social participation and integration, especially in the area of the work and family balance, the relation between work, care and social security, and lifestyles and life courses. Explicit attention is paid to the assumptions of and developments in social policy and social interventions in the software (care and welfare) and the hardware (social security and infrastructural services) of societies, and its consequences. Social issues are studied from three interrelated perspectives: As social issues: here the query is directed at the conditions of social integration of citizens on basis of two perspectives; 1) cultural changes in and new norms of lifestyles, life courses, work and family balance and intergenerational relations, and 2) the nature, content and background and consequences of current transformations of work, care and welfare as well as of the infrastructure of welfare states. Both aspects are studied in a historical and cross-national comparative way. The focus of the theme is on conditions of social integration as well as on factors that inhibit social integration. As policy issues: guiding questions are those regarding the content (what?) and the steering (how?) of social policy aimed at shaping social integration. New forms of steering and regulation – new governance – of organisations and professionals are introduced which must foster effective social and infrastructural services are questioned.  As intervention issues: how do social professionals and social techniques intervene in the life of citizens through definition of social problems and assistance practices.

The activity and changing responsibility of citizen themselves is also analyzed in relation to care and labour. The new care and welfare order bases itself around the concept of the “active citizen” who should take responsibility for his/her own and each other’s welfare and for community well-being. The state wants citizens to actively build and sustain society, particularly on a local level. In exchange for contributing in this manner, citizens receive more democratic influence. The ideal of active citizenship carries with it new identities and cultural ideals such as who deserves applause versus who should be pitied. It introduces new ways in which citizens relate to each other as well as to governments and institutions of the welfare state. Moreover, the ideal of active citizenship comes with new framing and feeling rules.

 

Urban Middle Class

In the Dutch debate around the goals of urban renewal, we see a shift from focusing on issues of social cohesion to looking at social mobility instead. A number of politicians consider the recruitment of middle class individuals to a poorer neighbourhood or maintaining an already existing middle class necessary because the middle class could possibly play a role in the ‘upward mobility’ of those with less social, cultural, and economic capital.

In the coming years, we intend to research the benefits and negatives of neighbourhood dynamics and how they relate to each other. How can we use these dynamics, at the core of urban life, to promote social mobility? Can we point to examples – including international ones – of small interventions which have served as bridges to transform “problem” neighbourhoods into “successful” ones? How, then, can one explain the achievement of such “success”?

On the local level, one often associates “problem” neighbourhoods with poverty, misery, and crippling social mobility. Interestingly now, some neighbourhoods and some population groups can better manage such affairs by mobilizing the government. The role of local ‘agents of change’ or, more generally, the presence of the middle class appears to be a critical factor. But will middle class people help those with lesser skills gain access to a higher social position? Although politicians and social scientists laud the role of the middle class in relation to social mobility, this process is still relatively unmapped.

 

 

Cluster directors: Jan Willem Duyvendak (UvA)

Cluster PhD coordinator: Dr. Giselinde Kuipers (UvA)

Cluster PhD student committee member: Rogier van Reekum (UvA)

 

 

Staffmembers and PhD Students in this Cluster