I introduce the “equality–difference paradox.” This is the observation that ethnically homogenous countries like Ireland and Denmark tend to have low levels of income inequality, while countries such as the United States and South Africa, with high levels of ethnic diversity, tend to have higher levels of income inequality. I situate this paradox within the context of historical and contemporary demographic change. I explore possible explanations of the paradox in relation to Sierra Leone, South Africa, Denmark, the United States, China, and India. The paradox draws attention to two broader issues: first, the role of pluralism in complex, globalized, multicultural societies; and second, how ongoing efforts to address the paradox raise fundamental questions about how we organize future societies. I conclude this chapter by closing Part II of the book and orienting towards Part III, which explores three possible futures of economic inequality and capitalism.

The central theme of Chapter 1 is the negotiation between non-Muslims’ sense of belonging and the degree of recognition granted by Muslims and state authorities. It examines the tension between national and religious identities and the legal frameworks that shaped non-Muslims’ lives, including the concept of dhimma/zemmeh, the payment of the non-Muslim tax (jezyeh), judicial procedures, and the valuation of blood money (diyeh). Particular attention is given to the Treaty of Torkamanchay and its consequences for non-Muslim Iranians, especially the establishment of the “Department of Diverse Peoples” within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to handle their cases. Patterns of migration and displacement also form part of this discussion. The chapter further argues that the emergence of the Babi and later Bahaʾi faith in Iran unsettled and redefined perceptions of all non-Muslims in Iranian society.

This chapter departs from many typical readings of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which treat that novel’s spiritual and numinous presences, practices, and powers as fantastical or magical rather than real and efficacious. Drawing on Díaz’s own statements, I show how the novel insists on the reality of supernatural forces and on how practices of prayer and the intervention of powerful spiritual forces, such as the Mongoose, can lead to resilience and survival amid the uncertainties and traumas of Caribbean dictatorship and migration to America. Díaz’s sense of cosmic vision in the novel, an insistence that there is spiritual purpose and power at work in the cosmos, shows how syncretic religious formations in the Caribbean can empower a radical hope in the face of the seemingly traumatic and impossible.

The book’s insights require recognizing the strengths of lower-income people, though constrained and facing a wide variety of adaptation challenges. Because successful adaptations require government commitment, leaders must not evade their accountability to address problems of migration, land dispossession, and health risks. The weak healthcare effort, from medical services to vaccinations and nutrition, requires greater investment. Administrative effectiveness is important, but adaptation fairness is also crucial. No one should assume that people will be environmentally responsible when incomes are jeopardized without incentives to adjust their behavior. It is an additional challenge if vulnerable people must migrate apart from state resettlement programs. Tradeoffs across sectors pose challenges when efforts to address one sector’s threat undermine another. Addressing growing problems of energy shortages and fossil-fuel pollution cannot rely on solar and wind energy to avoid reliance on controversial hydro and nuclear power. High wealth concentration must be assessed in terms of both the risks and opportunities they present to sound adaptations. Southeast Asian countries’ advantages of strong connections within and beyond the region depend on geopolitical neutrality despite provocations.

The introduction provides a road map to the book, explaining key concepts such as “quota refugees,” Jews in Germany since 1990, and German Jewish relations more broadly, including the role of art and literature in memory contests since 1990. The rationale for the inclusion of the many texts under discussion is contextualized with an overview of current scholarly debates, such as the debate on “multidirectional memory,” as well as the more divisive conversations on Israel and Zionism especially after October 7, 2023. Additionally, concepts such as reader response theory, the importance of multilingualism, and Jewish–Muslim relations are explored. Ultimately, theintroduction shows how and why literature matters in the German Holocaust remembrance discourse, at a time when live Holocaust survivor testimony is no longer available, and when German society is inflected by other voices, predominantly Muslim.

Union veterans faced significant challenges returning to civilian life. The war had removed them from civil society, collected them into vast armies where new social norms prevailed, subjected them to hardship, introduced them to different geographies and climates, and often exposed them to combat trauma. Readjusting to civilian norms was difficult in a society that expected them to quietly resume their prewar lives. As a result, many veterans left their antebellum communities and moved west. Those who reinvented themselves on the frontier differed from the overall Union veteran population. They were more mobile both before and after the war, served longer enlistments, were more likely to have been wounded or have encountered wartime trauma, and often either consciously or unconsciously compensated for their exposure to trauma when choosing where to settle and with whom to interact. The frontier provided the mechanism they needed to reclaim their lives. The nuances of veteran migration to the frontier cannot be fully understood without accounting for both the war and its aftermath, blurring the line between “military history” and “war and society” as paradigms of analysis.

The fifth chapter, offering reflections on Jewish as well as Muslim protagonists, expands to deliver a fresh account of Jewish and Muslim lives today. Living in “postmigrant” Germany, today’s Jewish and Muslim identities, as depicted in contemporary narratives by Olga Grjasnowa, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, Kat Kaufmann, and Deborah Feldman, are no longer shaped by either binary gender identity or clearly defined categories of Muslim, Jewish, or other ethnic origins. Many of these newer texts display highly innovative language and style, as well as characters who transcend or fuse multiple boundaries at the same time. “Polysingularity” emerges as a new category for defining Jewish as well as Muslim characters’ migratory experiences. “Identity” seems to be a less fruitful classification now, since both Jewish and Muslim individuals in the most recent texts are presenting as never fixed, always fluid, in transition. This chapter concludes with an exploration of the category of postmigration, probing to what extent Jewish identity still figures meaningfully in conversations on the future of Holocaust memory and antisemitism in the twenty-first century.

What does it mean to move to a country, by force or willingly, and then have to navigate a new system, a hundred new systems that make up your new life? Or what might it mean to be born in Aotearoa New Zealand or for your family to have been here for multiple generations and yet to be made to feel forever that you do not belong? Do systems have a place in promoting wellbeing and belonging? What might it mean to work in health care or social services with people and communities that are culturally different from your own? This chapter invites you to go beyond thinking about skills and competencies for working with difference or about models of diversity and to instead zoom out and think about how bigger social and political contexts impact on care. How does the media, your family, politicians and others shape how you treat others? The concept of cultural safety invites practitioners to engage in critical and reflective processes to understand these contexts and histories. It is more likely that if we do so, we might transform the unequal societal power relations that impact on the life chances and health outcomes of others.

Chapter 6 brings in a transnational dimension to the study of China’s image-making in Ethiopia by examining the role of the West in conditioning this encounter. Drawing on interviews with core participants in Chinese initiatives, including Ethiopian elites and Chinese diplomatic professionals, the analysis reveals their shared aspirations for the West, and especially for the United States. Ethiopian participants tend to treat the West as a quality marker, and China as a secondary choice, and at times even as a pathway to experiencing the West. Ironically, Chinese soft power promoters also appear to uphold and aspire to Western hierarchies and use Ethiopia and Africa as a channel toward more desired professional destinations in the West. While Chinese official narratives invoke competition with the West, the actual participants in the Sino-African encounter still strive to be part of it.

This chapter presents relationships between processes of both internal and international migration as a signature feature of Los Angeles literature. Through works by Facundo Bernal, Carlos Bulosan, Laila Lalami, and Nayomi Munaweera, Manizza Roszak reflects upon LA’s status a node of global migration. In the works of John Fante, Walter Mosley, Michele Serros, Charles Yu, Percival Everett, and Tommy Pico, meanwhile, questions of transnationality still surface, but are recontextualized by processes intranational migration both historical and contemporary – reflecting LA’s longstanding image as a destination of promise and opportunity. When racial or ethnic marginality inflects experience of the city, however, hopes for renewal and self-remaking rapidly turn to disappointment and frustration. Nevertheless, inter-diasporic solidarities remain.

The transformations of the modern era have led to today’s vast social divisions between wealth and poverty, but also created a human community that is interconnected on a global scale, processes that are examined in this chapter. Major economic and political changes, such as industrialization and de-industrialization, imperialism and anti-imperialism, the rise and collapse of communism, and the expansion of nationalism, have intersected with social and cultural changes within a framework of rapidly increasing population and human impact on the environment. International movements for social justice have called for greater egalitarianism and understanding, while ethnic, religious, and social divisions have led to brutality, genocides, and war. Technological developments in agriculture, medicine, and weaponry have both extended human life and extinguished it at levels unimagined in earlier eras, simultaneously challenging and reinforcing long-standing social hierarchies and cultural patterns.