Integrating Space and Mobilities into the Analysis of Social Inequality

Abstract

Although there is an observable increase in socio-economic polarizations within most (Western) countries, the debate on social inequalities has lost its former central position within sociology. Against the background of current political and economic changes as well as technological developments, which appear to re-structure social relations, traditional approaches to social class, social mobility and social inequality show less and less analytical and interpretative power. This paper seeks to contribute to an improved understanding of the mechanisms through which social inequalities are being continuously reproduced. I suggest a synthetic approach which understands social inequality as multidimensional and relationally constituted within different social spaces. For this purpose, Bourdieu's approach to relational social inequalities represents a fruitful point of departure but also contains several shortcomings. Therefore, I propose an extension by Shepphard's concept of positionalities as the relationally defined places of actors within these spaces. Furthermore, I elaborate on the relational character of the socio-spatial world by drawing on the mobilities paradigm. The establishment and sustaining of social relations, which constitute spaces through material practice, rest to a large extent on mobilities allowing or denying access to the spatialities of resources, activities and goods. Understood in a broader sense encompassing potential, virtual and physical movement of goods, symbols and people, mobilities thus constitute a significant stratifying force through which unequal life chances are being continuously reproduced. The suggested integration of so far largely unconnected strands in social theory is seen as a fruitful frame for further research of the reproduction of social inequalities and their impacts on people's lives. A corresponding research agenda is at the end of the paper.