Are managers the new barbarians destroying local and national societies?

Mobility is clearly a feature of contemporary societies and a major driver of social change, creating new cleavages within national societies. Understanding those processes requires seriously considering the specificities of each society, for not everybody is mobile all the time. Individuals do not float in the world maximising their personal interests. Groups, values, social structures matter and clearly vary between societies. Territorialisation remains central despite the rise of transnational mobilities. The impact of mobility in European societies can only be explained in close relation to rootedness: the inscription of individuals within families, social groups, cities, welfare regimes and national societies. Mobility and mobile lives only make sense in relation to local lives and neighbourhoods, and it is the combination of the two that prevents us from falling into the trap of perceiving radical change where there is not much of it. The hypothetical link between mobility(ies), the making of a globalised society, and the disappearance of existing social structures is, in fact, questionable. The empirical evidence analysed in our book, Globalised Minds, Roots in the City: Urban Upper Middle Classes in European Cities, provides interesting elements to reflect on the fact that, whatever the level of transnational mobility, it is quite likely that people may remain firmly rooted in their city and national context. Mobility adds a new level of complexity, and acts as a powerful driver for individualisation, but it is articulated in combination with previously existing social structures.