2012 The Year of People on the Move

By Zygmunt Bauman*
Social Europe Journal

There is some likelihood that the year about to end will be recorded in history as a “year of people on the move”.

When people move, two questions are in order. The first is: where from are they moving? The second is: where to? There has been no shortage of answers to the first question; indeed, there was a surfeit of answers – thoughtful and thoughtless, serious and fanciful, credible and chimerical. Thus far, though, we are looking for an answer to the second question in vain. All of us – including, most importantly, people on the move.

This is not at all surprising. This is what was to be expected in times dubbed in advance by Antonio Gramsci as “interregnum” (the term unduly and for much too long sunk into oblivion, but fortunately excavated recently and dusted-off thanks to Professor Keith Tester): times at which the evidence piles up almost daily that the old, familiar and tested ways of doing things work no longer, while their more efficient replacements are nowhere in sight – or too precocious, volatile and inchoate to be noticed or to be taken seriously when (if) noted.

Read the full article in the Social Europe Journal.

*Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds and one of Europe’s foremost sociologists. He is author of 'Liquid Modernity' (Polity 2000) and many other books on contemporary society. His most recent books are "44 letters from the liquid-modern world" and "Living on borrowed Time" (with Citlali Rovirosa-Madrazo)