Globalization and existential inequality: The precariousness of belonging

Abstract

The chapter explores the link between global mobility and "distanciation", identified as the dynamic underlying new forms of "existential inequality" in the global arena. It is argued that in the course of globalization a disjuncture is unfolding between inclusion and belonging which turns the equilibrium of a good life into an ongoing precarious achievement. Accordingly, emphasis is placed on a temporalized understanding of situatedness which makes it difficult to argue in the accustomed winner/loser dichotomies with respect to global social inequality. Instead global existential inequality is portrayed as a complex and shifting sociocultural order. The chapter draws on a more recent approach to global social inequality provided by Therborn, and refers for macro and micro illustrations of the argument towards postcolonial and postsocialist settings respectively.