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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference

@fod-soc.bsky.social
68 followers 48 following 30 posts

Exploring how race, gender, migration and other social categories are contested and reconfigured in contemporary societies worldwide. Find essays and more at: futuresofdifference.substack.com

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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The future of migration and diversity is not in Europe or North America. It is in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America. So why do we still measure these societies against Western norms? Loren Landau (Oxford, Wits) asks this in his short for Futures of Difference.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Is Diversity a Western Concept?
Short · Loren Landau on decentering the West in diversity scholarship
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What is the value of doubt — and of the spaces in between? Can AI, in its drive for resolution, erase them? Sylvie Delacroix on the hesitation that no longer gets written. informationaldemocracy.substack.com/p/in-between...
informationaldemocracy.substack.com
In-Between Spaces
Grounding · Sylvie Delacroix on conversational AI and a loss nothing registers
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A new short in our Futures of Difference series: my close friend and longtime collaborator Paul Spoonley on why the future of difference is not predetermined, and why social media may decide whether we engage across difference or fragment further.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
How Technology Shapes Human Diversity
Short · Paul Spoonley on social media as the battleground for diversity's future
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
What does superdiversity look like outside Europe? @nandosigona.bsky.social sends fieldnotes from Salvador da Bahia & Belém, where diversity comes not from recent migration but from colonialism, slavery, syncretism & internal mobility. Sound organises the street. The concept gets stretched here.
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The future of diversification is no longer Europe or North America. It is Africa, Asia & Latin America. Sakura Yamamura (RWTH Aachen) argues the shift has to reach our frameworks too, not just our case studies. And that temporal orientation is itself a form of difference.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
How Do Social Categories Work Across Scales?
Short · Sakura Yamamura on decentering Western frameworks as diversity moves to the Global South
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Reposted by Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference
⿻ Audrey Tang 唐鳳 @audreyt.org · 04/08/2026
Can AI save democracy?🛟 That's the $64,000 question.❓ But is democracy in need of “saving” or an assistive-intelligence, ⿻Plurality-powered revitalisation?🙋 As technology evolves, we evolve & democracy evolves — together.🤝 Read on!🙏 ▶️ www.forbes.at/artikel/kann... #LLAP🖖
Audrey Tang, wearing a top with a blue vertical central panel and a black-and-white patterned suit, gesticulates with upward raised hands while explaining the Taiwan Model-inspired Civic AI and 6-Pack of Care framework in a photograph taken by Eric Hsu for a Forbes Austria interview. Tang is Taiwan’s cyber ambassador, first digital minister, architect of the Taiwan Model for digital diplomacy and 2025 Right Livelihood laureate.
https://civic.ai/
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 11/08/2026
And while you’re here, follow the team members who are on Bluesky: @evanhadfield.bsky.social @bethnoveck.bsky.social @audreyt.org @georgdiez.bsky.social @fod-soc.bsky.social @mpips.bsky.social
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 11/08/2026
Honored to be part of this amazing group of scholars working on Informational Democracy at the Max Planck Institute! We'll be exploring how AI and changing information systems are reshaping democracy, public debate, and collective decision-making. Follow along: informationaldemocracy.substack.com
informationaldemocracy.substack.com
Informational Democracy | Substack
Rethinking democracy for the age of AI and information abundance. A working group of the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science. Click to read Informational Democracy, a Substack public...
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Justin Gest's essay: emigration from authoritarian states produces not only a brain drain but a democratic drain. Those who leave are more likely to support democratic institutions & their exit thins out the base for a potential uprising. On Iran & the implications for the receiving democracies
futuresofdifference.substack.com
The Democratic Drain Behind Failed Uprisings
Essay · Justin Gest on Why Authoritarian Regimes Outlast Popular Anger — and How Emigration Quietly Shrinks the Constituency for Democracy
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Can you imagine a dystopic – or utopic – future of social difference? Phil Kasinitz (CUNY) explores political exclusion, migration, and cosmopolitanism, arguing that difference is something to embrace, not fear. Watch his full statement here:
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Dystopia, Utopia, and Difference
Short · Phil Kasinitz on cosmopolitanism, demographic necessity, and national identity
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Social categories are neither neutral nor fixed. They are constructed, contested, and subject to change. Matt Sheedy (University of Manitoba), reads Mamdani's mayoralty as a live experiment in shifting the symbolic registers through which Muslim public figures become legible.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Zohran Mamdani: Muslim, "Commie," Saviour?
Essay · Matt Sheedy on How New York's First Muslim Mayor Is Rewriting the Stereotypes — and What That Reframing Means for Islam, the Left, and the Politics of Representation
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
We asked sociologist Thomas Faist (Bielefeld University): "What is the most important thing to bear in mind when imagining futures of social difference?" His answer draws on his work on climate change, and reframes the whole diversity debate. To watch & visit my substack:
futuresofdifference.substack.com
What Is Temporal Colonialism?
Short · Thomas Faist on the debt we owe future generations
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Corporations aren't just bound by anti-discrimination law. They decide which racial categories are visible and which quietly disappear. Legal scholar Atinuke Adediran (Fordham) on the corporation as category-maker. New essay in our Futures of Difference series, worth a read!
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Corporations as Category-Makers
Essay · Atinuke O. Adediran on How Corporate Language Defines, Measures, and Now Erases Racial Categories
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Can eliminating difference actually make conflict worse? John Borneman (Emeritus, Princeton) traces Germany's path from Cold War division to migration related resentment: opposition doesn't disappear, it resurfaces onto new targets each time. Read his fifth & final Futures of Difference essay here
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Polarization and The Third: How Attempts to Eliminate Difference Can Intensify Conflict
Essay · John Borneman on Why Germany's Reunification Story Reveals the Logic of Polarization — and How an "Intersubjective Third" Can Interrupt It
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
I was especially happy to have the eminent Brenda Yeoh, one of the most brilliant scholars I know, contribute to this series. Her bifocal approach, the intimate encounter & the long arc of change, is exactly the kind of thinking this platform was built for. To enjoy the full short click below :
futuresofdifference.substack.com
How Does Migration Shape Identity?
Short · Brenda Yeoh on combining microscopic and telescopic lenses to understand migration
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Categories like race, gender & migration status are being multiplied, merged & erased all at once & the direction is still open. That is why I ask where these changes might lead. This essay by Nowicka builds on that, asking which categories we should build policy on & points somewhere unexpected.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Why Categories Matter: Which Ones We Need for a More Just World
Essay · Magdalena Nowicka on Why We Need Neither More Categories Nor No Categories — but Different Ones That Make State-Produced Inequality Visible
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
What holds a diverse society together? In his 4th essay for Futures of Difference, John Borneman finds Syrians who couldn't share space at home – Alawite, Druze, Christian, Sunni – now living side by side in exile. Difference doesn't disappear, the boundary that organises it changes.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Unity and Difference
Essay · John Borneman on Why Syria, Lebanon, and Diaspora Communities Reveal That Political Order Is Never About Producing Unity, but About Living With Difference
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Nearly a decade after Brexit, what has actually changed?In a new FoD essay @nandosigona.bsky.social argues that Brexit’s deepest legacy is reshaping belonging. Insecurity has become a feature of governance rather than a by-product via status checks, income thresholds & conditional settlement routes
futuresofdifference.substack.com
The Politics of Difference after Brexit
Essay · Nando Sigona on How Brexit Reshaped Britain's Architecture of Belonging — From Open-Ended Security to Conditional, Bureaucratically Managed Precarity
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
"Who is imagined as part of the future, & who is being left out as categories mutate?" In our latest FoD short, social psychologist Johanna Lukate pushes back on one of our most comfortable assumptions - that putting "post-" in front of a category means we've moved beyond the power it once carried
futuresofdifference.substack.com
How Social Categorization Distributes Power
Short · Johanna Lukate on why social categories mutate rather than disappear
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Building on his first essay in my Futures of Difference series, anthropologist John Borneman asks: does identity reveal an authentic inner self – or does it just fit us into reductive boxes? His answer: difference already lives within the self.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Engaging the Interiority of Difference
Essay · John Borneman on Why Identity Is Not a Stable Inner Essence — and How the Self Holds Difference Within Itself
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Migration researcher Jens Schneider (University of Osnabrück) offers a simple but consequential intervention: not all differences are the same. Watch the latest episode of Futures of Difference here. #FuturesOfDifference #SocialDifference #Sociology
futuresofdifference.substack.com
What Are Examples of Social Categories?
Short · Jens Schneider on which differences to keep and which to overcome
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
New on FoD: in a timely piece for our Initiative, James Hampshire (Sussex) reads Mamdani's NY victory as a path beyond the neoliberal compromise on migration: a material politics of difference that brings people of different races, ethnicities & faiths together around shared economic interests.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Liberal Democracy and the Future of Openness
Essay · James Hampshire on Why the Neoliberal Order Is Collapsing — and What a Material Politics of Difference Could Look Like After It
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
At our Futures of Difference Workshop, Ann Phoenix offered a synthesis I keep returning to: we may share a hopeful narrative about diversity, but we rarely stage our perspectives against each other. This connects directly to my launch essay on shifting categories of difference. Both are linked below
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Futures of Difference | Substack
Futures of Difference explores how social categories — race, gender, migration — are transforming. Essays & conversations with 30+ leading scholars. A scholarly platform from the Max Planck Institute,...
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
What turns a category into a community? In a new essay for our Futures of Difference series, @barrosvitor.bsky.social Barros takes up a question many of us face: how to make sense of the strong identities driving public life today. He offers a conceptual move worth thinking through.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Community and Category: Two Ways of Communicating Social Difference
Essay · Vitor Barros on Why Some Categories Become Communities — and What That Means for Identity, Belonging, and Constructivist Sociology
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The Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science @mpips.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
We are happy to share this milestone for evidence-based migration research. Congratulations to the IPM team - and especially to our Managing Director Steven Vertovec, President of the IPM, on the official launch at the Second International Migration Review Forum at the @unitednations1945.bsky.social
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Berliner Ensemble @blnensemble.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
"Friedman im Gespräch": in der vorletzten Ausgabe dieser Spielzeit spricht Michel Friedman am 18.5. mit @steffenmau.bsky.social und Karin Prien über Deutschland: was bleibt von einer Demokratie, wenn Wähler:innen sich nicht mehr für sie interessieren? es gibt noch Karten im Vorverkauf!
Michel Friedman sitzt auf dem mittleren von drei Stühlen und schaut Richtung Kamera, die beiden anderen leeren Stühle stehen sich direkt gegenüber
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Are we already living in a dystopia? The sociologist Miri Song (Kent / LSE) thinks – in some sense – yes. Watch her answer in our short video series, which is part of my Futures of Difference Initiative.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
When Social Categories Become Silos
Short · Miri Song on siloed categories, campus speech, and the need for productive disruption
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
How we talk about migration is never just about migration. In a new FoD essay, long-time collaborator @pwascholten.bsky.social unpacks the “migration obsession”– how broader anxieties get funneled into one category. Reads well alongside my launch piece on shifting categories of difference. Find here
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Futures of Difference | Substack
Futures of Difference explores how social categories — race, gender, migration — are transforming. Essays & conversations with 30+ leading scholars. A scholarly platform from the Max Planck Institute,...
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Reposted by Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference
The Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science @mpips.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
We’re hiring. @Dr. Hania Sobhy’s group “Teachers, Inequality and Collective Action” (TICA) is recruiting a Researcher, Postdoc & Doctoral Researcher. Focus: teachers, inequality & collective action, anchored in MENA. Part of EduTrack. Deadlines 31 May / 6 June. @populationeu.bsky.social
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
The demographic future of diversity isn't where you think it is. Junjia Ye (NTU Singapore) on the most important thing to keep in mind when imagining futures of social difference. She points to demographic trajectories most of the field isn't looking at & the blind spots explaining why – in 90 sec.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Diversification in African and Asian Cities
Short · Junjia Ye on why diversification must look beyond Western cities
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
"You have to expect the unexpected." Daniel Hiebert (Emeritus, UBC) on what's hardest about imagining futures of diversity: we keep flipping between our greatest hopes & our greatest fears – and both distort the analysis. A 3-minute clip from our Schloss Ringberg Symposium. Link in the comments.
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Schloss Ringberg. A high-level symposium. 40 world-leading scholars imagining the future of social difference. We asked @mlamont.bsky.social @harvard.edu :„How does imagining futures help us understand diversity and social difference today?“.
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Moral Boundaries and the Future of Solidarity
Michèle Lamont — how imagined futures create real inequality. From Futures of Difference at Schloss Ringberg.
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Just in time for the weekend, I'd like to recommend a podcast! For decades I've argued that social categories are not fixed or natural. They are constructed, contested, & constantly shifting. In this episode, Ann Phoenix & I explore what happens when complexity is denied - & why it matters right now
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Beyond Essentialism: Social Complexity and Intersectionality
Podcast · featuring Ann Phoenix on Psychosocial Identity, Intersectionality, and Social Complexity
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Reposted by Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference
Ben Gidley @bengidley.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Nancy Foner on when “White” didn’t include Jews and Italians in the USA open.substack.com/pub/futureso... (from @fod-soc.bsky.social, to which you should subscribe)
open.substack.com
Changing Views of Race in America
Essay · Nancy Foner on How Jews and Italians Became White, Why Today’s Immigrants Face a Different Path, and What History Reveals About Racial Change
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Steven Vertovec, Futures of Difference @fod-soc.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
I've always shied away from social media – but current times have changed this. The categories shaping our lives are being challenged rapidly & profoundly. That's why I've launched FoD: to explore where these trends are leading.The future of difference isn't predetermined - join the conversation
futuresofdifference.substack.com
Futures of Difference | Substack
Futures of Difference explores how social categories — race, gender, migration — are transforming. Essays & conversations with 30+ leading scholars. A scholarly platform from the Max Planck Institute,...
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