In commemoration of the legacy of Ulrich Beck : theory of migration and methodological cosmopolitanism

International audienceIn this paper we will discuss about the paradigm of methodological cosmopolitism proposed by Ulrich Beck from the theory of migrations, based on research on new migrants, cosmopolitics and inegal individuation. We will first discuss the relations between cosmopolitanism, reflexive modernity and individuation, and then introduce the paradigm of Post-Western Sociology in dialogue with methodological cosmopolitanism. In Europe because of economic crisis, ethnic conflicts and wars in different countries, increasing numbers of asylum seekers, refugees, new migrants converge in big cities where they experiencing integration, exclusion, or even expulsion. Biopolitics, economic insecurity on labour markets and ethnic discrimination are embedded in European society and do produce inegalitarian cosmopolitanism which could produce processes of socialization, de-socialization and re-socialization in local and global societies. New migrants and new cosmopolitan actors also develop capabilities to create subpolitics and transnational spaces. Narratives of new migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are characterized by a proliferation of biographical bifurcations which does reflect a double local and global individuation’s process and new global expulsions. The theoritical challenge is how to think, on one hand, of the dynamics, the coexistence and the simultaneity of the processes of violence, segregation, expulsion of new migrants and , on another hand, the production of new biopolitics and new subpolitics in a context of humanitarian crisis in struggling any form of methodological nationalism