Research Program
Inequality and difference are social facts in all societies, yet they shape coexistence to varying degrees. Inequality and difference, according to the shared assumption, are the result of social negotiation processes in which access to and rights of disposal over material and immaterial resources are distributed.
In this context, vertical and horizontal disparities are intertwined: vertical inequality encompasses economic differences in income and wealth, as well as varying access to means of production, the labor market, capital, credit, and welfare state services (e.g. education and health). Difference, as a horizontal disparity, includes the varying possibilities of social belonging and participation that arise from nationality, gender, skin color, religion, age, or language. Both forms, however, intersect and mutually reinforce (and weaken) one another along axes of global mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion such as racism, gender and class relations, and linguicism, which are reflected in corresponding national, regional, and everyday social processes.
The overarching aim of the doctoral college is to make visible the mechanisms in the construction and transformation of vertical and horizontal inequality and difference in their historical genesis. A central thematic focus in this regard is the perspective of migration: hardly any other topic is as well suited to making the dynamics of globalization and capitalization visible. Migration and mobility constitute essential contexts for socially produced and reproduced inequality and difference. Both the social and economic development of nation-states and the everyday experiences of people are influenced by them. Border and migration regimes shape transitions and conditions of reception and are the starting point of societal plurality. In the age of globalization, such plurality is not a state of exception, but post-migrant normality. Migration thus becomes an important perspective on societal change in the global context.
Migration results from inequality, it generates and transforms inequality, and it makes inequality visible. The same applies to processes of differentiation: they too result from migration and are transformed and reinforced by it. Our shared research interest lies in the dynamics that emerge from this constellation of migration, inequality, and differentiation processes: what is the nature of these dynamics, from which structural conditions do they emerge, what effects do they have on societies? We theorize these questions on different levels (narratives, discourses, structures, practices, everyday actions) using concrete empirical examples. These are not subsumed into a unified, overarching narrative, but remain individual and significant in their occasional contradictions.