Growing urbanization, inequalities and migration are interconnected, and in complex ways both cause and reflect the global restructuring of production and social reproduction.  Because humankind has become and might continue to be a species of city dwellers, and because humankind has become more than ever  unequal in their conditions of life and mobility across national borders, the questions we ask about urbanization and urban inequality in a transnational world are questions about the human condition.  What are the spatialities of these interconnected trends and what are those emerging spaces?  What are the new and persistent forms of inequality they produce?  What are the ways in which inhabitants, vastly unequal in their conditions of life, negotiate their livelihoods, security, and dignity in these emerging urban spaces? How is transnationalism implicated in the production of these ascendant inequalities?

The Cities and Inequalities in a Transnational World conference seeks to better understand aspects of these unfolding processes of urbanization and transnationalism that might prove similar or different from the past and across regions.  Through this conference we seek a global perspective grounded in the experiences of various regions of the world, including Africa, South and South East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, European Union; Russia and Eastern Europe.

For more information on the symposium, visit the 2012 Joint Area Centers Symposium page