Contexts of Mobilities and Inequality: Conjuncture and Vision

Abstract

Mobilities, both locomotional and aspirational, feed into inequalities. This interlinkage can be seen on national, international and planetary dimensions. At the national level, there are issues of internal migration and multiple social stratification fault lines. The issue of international/transnational migrations puts to relief not only the economic but also geopolitical and socio-psychological inequalities. This is the global context. Beyond the global, there is the planetary problematique of life on Earth signalled by global warming, climate change and reckless exploitation of nature through fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. This human predicament can be summed up as our present existence in the Anthropocene. Having thus examined the entire spectrum of the present contexts of mobilities and inequalities, we look finally at the existing configuration of geopolitical power and to a vision of the underlying cross-cultural moral/spiritual solutions to the crisis of social justice in our times.