Patterns of inequality in the post-Socialist context

As Eastern European countries have shifted from state-controlled to market-based economies, so the nature of social inequalities in the post-Socialist region has undergone a variety of significant changes, each of which raises new questions and concerns for Russian and East European studies. Levels of income inequality, for example, although relatively stable in the western-most countries of the region, have risen dramatically in some of those countries emerging from the former Soviet Union, a number of which are now characterised by extremes of poverty and wealth. In turn, this divergence in levels of inequality indicates that channels of social mobility, and the degree to which these are open to different social groups, are developing in different ways across the region. One such difference may stem from the predominance of informal relations in key aspects of socio-economic life – in the labour market or in the business and political arenas, for example – which has emerged in some post-Socialist states. At the same time, it is unclear to what extent the failure of social institutions and the use of personal ties that accompanies this serves, on the one hand, to re-embed traditional forms of social division, or on the other hand, to cross-cut them. Indeed, the level of social and institutional change which has taken place in Central and Eastern Europe makes it a fascinating case study in attempting to understand broader issues relating to social mobility, namely, the degree to which such mobility is limited by social ‘structures’, and conversely, the extent to which those structures are malleable in the face of human agency. It would certainly appear that, within all of the countries in the region, increased freedoms of economic activity and movement have led to the emergence of significant new classes of people – entrepreneurs and economic migrants, for example – which are altering the social structure of those countries.

While the post-Socialist period may have given rise to new forms of mobility, it is equally likely that old and familiar forms of social division – stemming from gender, social class, residence in rural areas, or disability, for example – continue to be highly salient, but are simply produced and re-produced in different ways. Access to education and the labour market, for instance, was always highly stratified in Socialist societies (despite their professed egalitarianism), such that forms of stratification within these spheres may simply have transferred from state-distributive to market principles. In turn, this may have impacted upon the ways in which social inequalities are experienced. As the market makes access to a variety of services and forms of consumption dependent on individual means, an inability to access those services may become increasingly ‘individualised’, and thus experienced as a matter of individual rather than social responsibility. In connection with this, the establishment of variously successful forms of democracy in Eastern Europe raises questions about the ways in which social inequalities are expressed in the political realm – that is, about the ways in which citizens understand and are able to act upon social inequalities, and how this is manifested in new forms of political representation and division.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 692