Rejoinder: from the social question to the socio-ecological question

Abstract

ABSTRACT At first glance it seems outdated to use a nineteenth-century concept such as “the social question” for analysing contemporary social transformation. However, the shape-shifting of the social question over the past 200 years offers a unique opportunity to inquire into the changing mechanisms driving inequalities and conflicts around a transnational social order. This is particularly true for the field of migration, as it allows tracing the seminal changes regarding group differences along socially constituted markers such as class, religion, ethnicity, gender and age. The concept “transnationalized social question” is also helpful in linking the dual exploitation of human labour and nature and its societal consequences across borders, among them migration. This necessitates an extension of the social question into a socio-ecological question.