ABSTRACT
International migration in Europe and internal migration in China reveal the dynamics of social, political, and economic change that are at work in our increasingly complex, pluralistic, and diversified contemporary societies, which are now feeling the effects of a threefold trend toward the acceleration, globalization, and the regionalization of migratory circulations. Migratory patterns have diversified and become more complex, revealing how access to labor markets seems to be truly hierarchized in Europe and in China and how various forms of segmentation linked to economic dominance and social inequalities have emerged. So we have to define new located social stratification systems. In Europe and in China new migrants are taking part in the construction of labor markets that are both situated and multi-polar and within which are emerging productive microstructures, such as ethnic niches, economic institutions (such as international companies), and intermediate structures linked to trade or entrepreneurship. Also, in Europe and in China work is becoming increasingly individualized and taking place in a multiplicity of different locations; structural trends have given rise to employment systems that reinforce social inequalities and in which the least skilled migrants are regularly excluded and relegated to deskilling and deskilled jobs.
