Theorizing large-scale societal relations through the conceptual lens of cross-border assemblages

The concept of assemblage has recently become fashionable in studies of cross-border, global and transnational relations. In addressing the most important elements of this approach, the article provides an analytical vocabulary for analysing the processes of societalization in the context of global and transnational realms. After critically reflecting on the classical sociological approaches to society and social differentiation, the article argues that, because of its poststructuralist basis, the concept of assemblage is the appropriate conceptual tool for studying societal macro-relations of power and inequality while avoiding the modernist heritage of classical social theory. Furthermore, by synthesizing poststructuralist thinking, intersectional theory and multiscalar approaches to space, the article suggests that the assemblage theory can be used to better understand the current forms of cross-border social inequalities in the multiple and partly overlapping contexts of postcolonialism, postsocialism and the EU political project. In a nutshell, it is not a plea to adopt the assemblage approach as a new ‘grand theory’ but rather as a flexible conceptual tool that allows an inductive theory-building.