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A globalizing world

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It is a small world, and globalization is making it smaller…

  Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990’s, a new regime has slowly evolved and, in fact, continues to take shape. Globalization has remade the economy of virtually every nation, reshaped almost every industry and touched billions of lives, often in ambiguous ways;

  Globalization has come to mean a complete reordering of international priorities, strategies, and values as all states are drawn ever more tightly in the interdependent global economic, technological, communications cultural and ethical web;

  Economic globalization has accelerated the flows of communications, capital, technology, tourism, trade and immigration transforming the spatial organization of social relations and transactions, and generating increased levels of activity across communities around the entire world;

  Today, drugs, crime, sex, war, protest movements, terrorism, disease, people, ideas, images, news, information, entertainment, pollution, goods, and money all travel the globe. They are crossing national boundaries and connecting the world on an unprecedented scale and with previously unimagined speed.

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… globalization has drawn countries closer together   The figures below represent the conventional projection of the Pacific in

terms of distances (first figure) and in terms of time-space (second figure) based on relative time accessibility by scheduled airline flights in 1975:

Source: A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics, Politics; Edited by David Held (2004).

  The figures are quite different with some places in the second picture brought close together while others forced apart or forced out of the map.

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… it has stretched connections and relationships across the world   Increased connectivity has led many companies to spread their suppliers,

facilities, operations, and costumer base across a range of regions and countries. The figure below illustrates Volkswagen’s international production system:

Source: The Geography of the World Economy; Knox, P. and Agnew, J. (1998).

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… it has made communications almost instantaneous   The shrinking of distance and the speed of movement that characterize the

current globalization process find one of its most extreme forms in electronically based communities from all around the world interacting in real time and simultaneously;

  Communications networks stretching across the world have the potential to connect people, previously disconnected from what went on elsewhere, into a shared social space that is quite distinct from territorial space. Developments in information and communication technologies have changed relations between people and places and the ways we work:

  Today, communications networks have connected nearly a billion homes with the capacity to talk to each other within a few seconds;

  Every month, the New York Public Library reports 10 million information requests from across the globe on its main website, compared to 50,000 books dispensed to its local users (Darnton, 1999);

  Workers in India can connect to corporations and consumers in the U.S. with high speed satellite to perform a series of activities. The staffing of call centers has been highly publicized in the news.

$1.07

$.01

Banking

$2 Travel Booking $10

$150

$6

Trading

Industrial Economy

eEconomy

Approximate Cost Per Transaction

Declining Costs of Everyday Transactions

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… it has created a world market dominated by transnational corporations   The world market is as old as trade itself,

but in the last 25 years it has developed further and faster than ever before. The total foreign assets of the top 100 transnational corporations totaled $2,453 billion in 2000. In the same year, General Motors was worth more than the national economy of New Zealand;

  Transnational Corporations are a major force behind globalization as they reach beyond their original national borders to find investors, managers, workers, raw materials, as well as costumers;

  Their need to open up economies and to minimize controls on trade and the circulation of capital sometimes puts their interests in collision with those of governments both in their own countries and in their many host countries.

Home Base of Top 100 TNCs (Countries’ shares

in terms of size of foreign assets, 2000)

Transnational Corporations have grown in importance so much that today 51 of the top

100 economies are corporations, not

countries (Albert, 2001)

Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003).

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… it has also displaced some government functions onto the international arena   As economic globalization extends the economy beyond the boundaries of

the nation-state, and hence its sovereignty, transnational firms need to ensure that functions traditionally exercised by the state such as guaranteeing property rights and contracts be maintained;

  Globalization has been accompanied by the institution of new transnational legal and regulatory regimes and the creation of s series of organizations to administer those regimes;

  Among the most important ones in the private sector today are international commercial arbitration, and the variety of institutions which fulfill rating and advisory functions that have become essential for the operation of the global economy;

  The World Trade Organization (WTO), for example, has the authority to override local and national authority in terms of agreement violations, and hence can discipline sovereign states;

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  At the global level there has been also an explosive growth in the number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Currently, about 300 IGOs and 26,000 NGOs channel international contacts among governments, groups, and individuals;

  The proliferation of organizations has greatly contributed to the complexity of the international system. No longer are most international interactions bilateral but more and more states, even the most powerful ones, engage in multilateral diplomacy within the framework of IGOs such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, the European Union, the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice, among many others;

  Citizen groups play an increasing significant role in mobilizing, organizing, and exercising power across national boundaries. This explosion of “citizen diplomacy” constitutes a rudimentary “transnational civil society;”

  At the UN Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, for example, the formal representatives of government were outnumbered by the representatives of environmental, corporate and other interested parties.

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Brazil

Argentina

Greenland

Mongolia

India

Kazakhstan

S. Africa

Colombia

Cuba

Madagascar

Thailand Guatemala El Salvador

Honduras Nicaragua Costa Rica

Panama

Namibia

Angola

Israel

Saudi Arabia Egypt

Sudan

Congo

Morocco

Mauritania Mali Niger Chad

Kenya

Ethiopia

Tanzania

Mozambique

Italy

Taiwan

Hong Kong

China

Philippines

Nova Guinea Indonesia

Singapore

Malaysia

Vietnam Thailand

Peru

Chile

Russia

Venezuela Nigeria

Libya Algeria

Iran Iraq

Kuwait

Qatar UAE

Canada

USA

Mexico

Japan

South Korea

Australia

New Zealand

Turkey

Netherlands

Portugal

Spain

United Kingdom

Ireland

Iceland Norway

Sweden Finland

Luxemburg

Poland Czech Rep.

Slovakia

Somalia

International Organizations (2002)

Free Trade Area of the Americas

African Union

European Union (EU)

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Other countries and territories

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

League of Arab States – Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine Authority

G8 Countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and U.S. (GDP of $21,136 million or 67% of the world’s GDP)


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A World of Protests (Sites of Major Anti-globalization Demonstrations Since 1999)

Source: “The Globalization Backlash,” John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Foreign Policy.

G-8 Member Countries

Porto Alegre January 2001

Genoa July 2001

Naples March 2001

Bologna June 2000

Melbourne September 2000

Bangkok February 2000

Seoul October 2000

Göteborg June 2000

Prague September 2000

Davos January 2000

Washington D.C. April 2000

Seattle November 1999

Montreal April 2001

Honolulu May 2001

. . . . .

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… but globalization has excluded many from international economic flows   Globalization create connections and disconnections associated with cross-national

flows and networks. Those who are disconnected are effectively excluded from participation in the global economy creating what Castells (1998) calls the “Fourth World” made up of multiple pockets of social exclusion;


Canada

USA

Russia

Brazil

Mexico China

New Zealand

Chile

Australia

Argentina

Greenland

Iceland

Norway

Mongolia

Japan

India

Kazakhstan Spain

Portugal

S. Africa

Peru

Colombia

Cuba

Madagascar

Taiwan

Indonesia Nova Guinea Singapore

Malaysia

Thailand

Ireland

United Kingdom

Guatemala El Salvador


Panama

Namibia

Angola Americas 27

Africa 1

Europe 18

Oceania 40

Asia 3

Hong Kong

Israel

Saudi Arabia

Iran

Egypt

Sudan

Congo

Algeria Libya

Morocco


Nigeria Kenya

Ethiopia

Tanzania

Mozambique

Sweden

Netherlands

Luxemburg

Finland

Austria Slovenia

Italy

Greece

70 or more

50 - 69

30 - 49

10 - 29

1 - 9

under 1

no data

Telephone lines per 100 people, 2001

Personal computers per 100 people, 2001 estimates

More than 75 cell phone subscribers per 100 people

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… and has concentrated wealth, poverty and inequality worldwide   The global wealth gap keeps growing. The average inhabitant of the world’s richest country is over

100 times wealthier than the average inhabitant of the poorest country;

  However, many people in rich countries live in great poverty while some people in poor countries live in great wealth. Twenty years ago, Forbes, in its first ranking of wealth, found 140 billionaires worldwide. Today, the total is 793. The number of millionaires in Asia grew by some 700,000 between 2000 and 2004. In the same period, North America’s population of millionaires shot up 500,000, and Europe’s increased by 100,000. According to Merrill Lynch, China could become the world’s leading source of luxury shoppers by 2009;

  While 16% of the world’s people buy 80% of all consumables, 45 million people in the U.S. are living in poverty and 1.3 billion persons, that is 22% of the world’s population, lives below the poverty line - more than a billion people worldwide lives on less than $1 a day and half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 (The Guardian, October 2002);

  Even tough there is enough food in the world to feed everybody, 2 billion people – 1/3 of the world’s population - suffer from malnutrition;

  The average life expectancy today in the poorest African countries is the same as in Japan in 1900;

  Between 2000 and 2020, 68 million people will die of HIV/AIDS, 55 million of them in Sub-Saharan Africa - this is more than the total killed in both world wars;

  The poorer countries of the world pay out more in interest on their debts than they receive in economic aid, most of which takes the form of low-interest loans. In 2000, developing countries’ debts amounted to nearly $2,000 billion.


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… finally, globalization has changed the nature and significance of immigration   Global economic restructuring shape the nature, pace, and processes of migration and the terms

of national belonging raising questions as to whether political communities tied to particular pieces of land constituted into nation-states are still as important as they once were to the organization of human affairs or whether they are subject to erosion by the process of globalization;

  Immigration is one of the constitutive processes of globalization today, even though not recognized or represented as such in mainstream accounts about globalization;

  International migrations are embedded in larger geopolitical and transnational economic dynamics (Sassen 1998). The worldwide evidence shows that there is considerable patterning in the geography of migrations, and that the major receiving countries tend to get immigrants from their zones of influence. Immigration is at least partly an outcome of the actions of governments and major private companies in receiving countries;

  What we still narrate in the language of immigration, is actually a series of processes having to do with globalization of economic activity, of cultural activity, of identity formation – a set of processes whereby global elements are localized, international labor markets are constituted, and cultures from all over the world are de- and re-territorialized – they are along with the internationalization of capital a fundamental aspect of globalization;

  This new reality creates new notions of community, of membership, and of entitlement. The crucial question here is if a new transnational politics can be centered around the new transnational economic geography that is, can politics be denationalized?

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  Today, around 3% of the world’s population live outside their country of birth;

  The United Nations Population Division estimates an increase from 75 million to 150 million international migrants between 1965 and 2000. The annual rate of increase was more than 2.5% per year over the last 15 years compared to an annual rate of increase in population growth of about 1.5%.

Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003); International Organization for Migration, 2001.

Canada

USA

Russia

Brazil

Mexico China

New Zealand

Australia

Argentina

Greenland

Iceland

Norway

Mongolia

Japan

India

Kazakhstan Spain

Portugal

Peru

Colombia

Cuba Taiwan

Indonesia Nova Guinea Singapore

Malaysia

Thailand

Ireland

United Kingdom

Guatemala El Salvador


Panama

Namibia

Angola

Hong Kong

Israel

Saudi Arabia

Iran Egypt

Sudan

Congo

Algeria Libya

Morocco


Nigeria Kenya

Ethiopia

Tanzania

Sweden

Netherlands Luxemburg

Finland

Italy

50.0% and over

Cross-border Migration (foreign-born population excluding refugees as a

percentage of total population, 2000

20.0% - 49.9%

5.0% - 19.9%

1.0% - 4.9%

Under 1.0%

South Korea

Vietnam

Venezuela

Iraq

Turkey

Czech Rep. Slovakia

Somalia

North America

•  net migration 1.4 million

•  40 million migrants excluding refugees

Europe

•  net migration 0.8 million •  54 million migrants excluding refugees

Africa



Latin America & Caribbean


Oceania


Asia



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… and immigration, in turn, has exposed the growing contradictions of globalization   The increased circulation of capital, goods, and information under the impact of globalization,

deregulation, and privatization has forced the discussion of the circulation of people, exposing the contradictions between immigration and the public policies that are both causes and consequences of international migration;

  It is now conventional to think that the free movement of finance and trade from national regulations as one of the sources of the dynamism of a globalized economy, while at the same time insisting on the importance of maintaining nationalized systems for the regulation of migration;

The major contradiction that many observers see emerging from this new international context “is

that while deregulation has been a crucial mechanism to negotiate the juxtaposition of the global and the national - freeing up markets and

reducing sovereignty of the state by denationalizing national territories for the

operation of capital - it is the opposite when it comes to the transnationalization of labor. Here

there is a renationalization of politics” (Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents,

1998)

U.S. – Mexican Border, The New York Times

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…this migratory flow has created ambivalence among hosting country populations   Increase in immigration, coupled with the fact that it has been accompanied

by a greater racial-ethnic and cultural diversity, has created ambivalence regarding the implications for socio-cultural identities in receiving countries:

… a German government official is reputed to have said, in response to a question about the Germany’s experience with guest workers, that “in the beginning we thought we were getting workers, but in the end we realized we were getting people”

  Economic and fiscal implications of immigration create individual ambivalence and social tension since the economic well-being of local populations will either rise, fall, or stay the same on account of immigration – tangible costs and benefits are associated with immigration (Bean and Stevens 2003);

  The presence of undocumented immigrants exacerbate anxieties eliciting both the best and the worst features of many hosting societies. The best, recalls national myths of “countries as nations of immigrants” and “land of opportunities” where dreams are realized. The worst, bring nativist responses.