Abstract

The policies adopted in post communist central Europe have had deep consequences: they have increased the upwards and downwards mobility of the different socio-professional groups, they have created new islets of wealth as well as pockets of poverty, and they have replaced the previous system of so-called egalitarianism with a system based on meritocracy. The europeanization of these societies, which began long before reunification, also exerts pressure on social structures. Given the different areas of vulnerability (unemployment, social and economic exclusion, poverty), how credible is the threat of migration between the two social spaces, one “rich”, the other “poor”, which were reunited on May 1, 2004? At the same time, new dominant groups have appeared: the “eurocracy”, newly characteristic of the political and administrative elites, and the new entrepreneurs, members of an economic elite: the future of european reunification could well rest on the importance and weight these new elements come to gain with regard to the rest of society.