ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses classic theories relating migration and inequality and it sketches a more comprehensive model, in which the impact of socio-spatial autonomy on world social structure is explained. It begins with a review of theories on migrants’ position in the country of origin and of arrival, respectively. The chapter explores the paradoxical class relations between positions in several countries and transnational social spaces are discussed and the argument is expanded to include sedentary populations. Classic migration theory argues that migration responds to income differentials, i.e. inequalities between countries. Socio-spatial autonomy matters for the social positions of migrants and sedentary people alike, both in the Global North and the Global South. The chapter argues that resources can in principle work across national borders but this depends on the specifics of the plural contexts in which they are to be recognized. Migration structures inequalities not only when persons migrate, but also when persons might migrate or have migrants in their household.
