Network,exposure and rhetoric: Italian occupational fields and heterogeneity in constructing the globalized self

Drawing on the findings of a broad inter‐university research programme conducted in Italy, in this article we explore how individuals' transnational networks combine with other dimensions of their social experience in the production of a self‐perception of their own ‘global identity’. In particular, attention is focused on the structures and social spaces of everyday life in five crucial occupations (corporate managers, financial services workers, artists, media professionals and schoolteachers) where people's professional action is performed simultaneously along local and global axes. Within these groups the globalized self does not merely reflect individuals' engagement in transnational networks, but is also the outcome of a complex process including two added dimensions of social life in the job setting: (1) the degree and type of non‐filtered exposure to pressures stemming from the global environment, which both constrain and enable subjective practices of coping with change and ambiguity; and (2) the degree and type of competence in the rhetorics of globalization, namely the level of access to well‐known repertoires of interpretive resources for making sense of global trends. This analysis is consistent with social science conceptualizations arguing for a more nuanced understanding of globalization. In this light, not only is globalization a multidimensional process but it also produces a variety of responses and meanings by differently positioned actors.     

Corporate sustainability as a hegemonic discourse of globalization: The discourse-historical approach as a critical issues and stakeholder analysis tool

Corporate social responsibility, and its other conceptual variants such as corporate sustainability, encourages businesses to act on a range of issues outside what the law and shareholders require. But what are the limits of the concept and its discursive practices in a globalizing world marked by accentuated asymmetrical power relations between businesses, and the communities they operate in and serve (especially corporations working in less powerful global peripheries), and the regulators who are expected to police them? This study uses the discourse-historical approach (DHA) and corporate sustainability framework (CSF) to analyze a British independent oil production firm’s—Tullow—communication. It illustrates the utility of the DHA and the CSF for doing critical stakeholder and issues analysis from corporate communication texts. Second, it argues that corporate sustainability illustrates the power asymmetry between the global and local, corporations and community. Specifically, we observe how a petroleum firm uses sustainability discourse, as a form of hegemonic globalization, to perpetuate dominant tropes and conceptions about African local communities as homogeneous and lacking agency, commodifying the lived experiences of the locals in the process while entrenching the superiority of the firm’s own position as a ‘benevolent dictator.’ We also illustrate how particular mitigation and intensification discourse techniques are employed to uphold Tullow as a ‘do-good’ actor. The corporation’s discursive strategies have a cumulative effect of cementing the power asymmetry that already exists between the firm as an agent of a dominant center of global power and Ghanaian communities as less powerful interests in the globalization process. Suggestions for disrupting the hegemony are provided.     

Networks of capital,networks for migration: political–economic integration and the changing geography of Mexico–US migration

While economic globalization has altered the geography of international migration and introduced an array of new sources and destinations, our understanding of the specific mechanisms that link economic globalization to migration remains limited. In this article, I attempt to extend previous research by undertaking an empirical case study of Mexican migration to the USA. Using a unique dataset, I construct multivariate models to test whether, in the context of economic integration, occupations channel migration between similar sectors of the Mexican and US economies. I focus on the food‐processing sector because of its role in the geographic dispersal of Mexican immigration. The results show a strong channelling of Mexican immigration along an occupational line linking the Mexican and US food‐processing sectors. The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which ushered in a period of intensive political and economic integration, strengthened this occupational channel. By seeing the changing geography of Mexico–US migration in the context of economic globalization, this study casts light on the micro‐level foundations of the globalization–migration nexus.     

Hesitant Madams in a Global City: Japanese Expat Wives and their Global Householding in Hong Kong

Care work, once a sanctioned labor of love, is increasingly commodified in transnational contexts. The picture of migrant women shouldering the housework and child care of local professonal women may seem like a mutually beneficial arrangement—matching the “needs” of the haves and have-nots—, but the global care chain ultimately works to maintain the traditional gendered division of labor as well as global inequality. To this trend of globalization of care work, Japan has been an exception; however, how much longer it will be so is now in a question, as the government paves the way for importing domestic labor from abroad. This article focuses on Japanese expat wives in Hong Kong in order to locate Japanese women vis-à-vis the global care chain. The narrative analysis on how they decide whether to hire a domestic worker in their home away from home highlights the sociopolitical nature of their supposedly private choices. Some drew on cultural ideal of wifehood and motherhood to rationalize their choice while others referred to racialized or even overtly racist and classist images of foreign domestic workers. A few women spoke against the system itself, showing awareness of its inherent social injustice. All such narratives are never purely personal; their decisions and the rationalization behind them sustain the prevailing discourses of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, and class, which, in turn, envelop their attempts at global householding.     

BRAIN DRAIN IN GLOBALIZATION: A GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS FROM THE SENDING COUNTRIES' PERSPECTIVE

According to the economic literature, high‐skilled emigration may either harm or benefit developing economies. Recent research highlighted several positive and negative channels through which the brain drain operates. This paper aims at evaluating the relative magnitudes of various brain drain channels and quantifying their global impact on migrants' sending countries. For this purpose, we develop a 10‐region general equilibrium model of the world economy characterized by overlapping‐generations dynamics. Our findings suggest that the short‐run impact of brain drain on resident human capital is extremely crucial, as it affects not only the number of high‐skilled workers available to domestic production, but also the sending economy's capacity to innovate/adopt modern technologies. This latter effect is particularly important in globalization, where capital investments are made in places with high production efficiencies. Hence, despite positive feedback effects, those countries facing prevalent high‐skilled emigration are the most candid victims to brain drain. (JEL F22, J24, O57)     

Organizational Commitment over the Gendered Life Course at a Mexican Company

Mexican workplaces have changed significantly in response to the global marketplace by restructuring, downsizing, and implementing new production and administrative processes. This case study analyzes organizational commitment at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation within the context of workplace transformation. Based on in‐depth interviews with 83 women and men, I identify two sources of commitment—family‐friendly and career‐friendly employment practices. Using the framework of the gendered life course, I show commitment fluctuated given the employees' stage in the life course. This study builds on the gender and work research by exploring how individual attributes of gender and parental status contribute to organizational commitment, but are underscored by the complexity of workplace context.     

Producing Migrant Domestic Work: Exploring the Everyday Political Economy of Malaysia's ‘Maid Shortage’

Abstract

The article considers how the employment of domestic workers by middle-class Malaysian households has been thrown into flux by the imposition of bans on the sending of workers by states such as Indonesia and Cambodia, as well as the decline in numbers of women seeking employment as domestic workers in Malaysia and rising employment costs. This article does not seek to focus on the high-level policy negotiations and disputes that have come to characterize systems of temporary return migration for domestic work in Asia, but to focus in on the everyday political economies (of social reproduction, work, and everyday agency) that constitute the conditions of possibility within which bilateral disputes and labour agreements between Southeast Asian states take shape. We examine three dimensions of migration for domestic work in Southeast Asia in ways that bring together literatures on everyday life and social reproduction. These interconnected yet distinct dimensions are (a) the relationship between strategies to boost remittances and flows of workers from some of the most impoverished parts of Southeast Asia; (b) the centrality of low-cost migrant domestic workers to Malaysian middle-class ‘success stories’, and (c) the day-to-day production of ‘good’ worker subjects—a process that is actively and constantly resisted by workers themselves. The article provides important insights into the mechanisms through arenas of everyday life—and the household in particular—are transformed; becoming sites for the ever widening and deepening of the market economy.     

Corporations and the State in the Global Era: The Case of Seaboard Farms and Texas*

Abstract Employing the case of the expansion and regulation of hog confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) in Texas combined with the actions of the transnational agri‐food corporation Seaboard Farms, Inc., this paper probes the relationship between the state and corporations in the global era. It specifically investigates the ability of the state to control agri‐food corporations in a context in which the hyper‐mobility of capital has increasingly allowed corporations to by‐pass state regulations and requirements. Salient literature is reviewed by grouping it into three camps: the first views the state as largely controlled by corporations; the second stresses the powers left to the state and the fact that corporations need state assistance to successfully operate in the current global economy; and the third acknowledges the crisis of the nation‐state under globalization but maintains that the state has retained some ability to resist globalization forces. The case study documents the expansion of Seaboard Farms' hog operations in the Panhandle Region of Texas and nearby states and its interaction with local and state governments and agencies. The article indicates that the relationship between transnational corporations and the state is contradictory. Its source rests on the fracture between varying postures maintained by the state and the relatively homogenous behavior of the CAFO corporations. The case also reveals that the state's limited control of corporate actions is facilitated by state strategies; that corporate actions are successful if corporations enlist the cooperation of the state; and the state is able to control resistance and legitimize its actions to its constituencies. These conditions, however, do not prevent the emergence of anti‐corporate resistance at local and state levels. In the search for new forms of socioeconomic development, local residents and their leaders should be aware of corporations' ability to affect state action, state postures that favor corporate designs, and the fact that successful opposition to corporate designs can be, and is, carried out.     

Becoming Overweight without Gaining a Pound: Weight Evaluations and the Social Integration of Mexicans in the United States

Mexican women gain weight with increasing duration in the United States. In the United States, body dissatisfaction tends to be associated with depression, disordered eating, and incongruent weight evaluations, particularly among white women and women of higher socioeconomic status. However, it remains unclear how being overweight and obesity are interpreted by Mexican women. Using comparable data of women aged 20–64 from both Mexico (the 2006 Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutricion; N = 17,012) and the United States (the 1999–2009 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys; N = 8,487), we compare weight status evaluations among Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, US‐born Mexicans, US‐born non‐Hispanic whites, and US‐born non‐Hispanic blacks. Logistic regression analyses, which control for demographic and socioeconomic variables and measured body mass index and adjust for the likelihood of migration for Mexican nationals, indicate that the tendency to self‐evaluate as overweight among Mexicans converges with levels among non‐Hispanic whites and diverges from blacks over time in the United States. Overall, the results suggest a US integration process in which Mexican‐American women's less critical self‐evaluations originate in Mexico but fade with time in the United States as they gradually adopt US white norms for thinner body sizes. These results are discussed in light of prior research about social comparison and negative health assimilation.     

Networked audiences and cultural globalization

Most research approaches globalization from a top‐down perspective that looks at how past economic, political, and cultural arrangements influence non‐Western cultures. This essay instead uses the concept of the networked audience as an entry point to understand the dynamics of cultural globalization. We first discuss the mass audience in relation to cultural imperialism/homogenization. We then examine the recent shift to the networked audience in the context of digital globalization, computer networking, and social media. Afterwards, we investigate how the conceptualization of global networked audiences contributes to new understandings of global cultures and exchanges. The network perspective suggests that the traditional conceptualization of globalization via the center‐periphery model no longer works, but rather that cultural flows through networks enable individuals to have some, but limited, agency and power to resist corporate and elite controls.     

Women's status and global food security: An overview

Scholars are increasingly examining how gender interacts with food security, with specific attention given to women. This is not surprising, given that women make up 43% of the global agricultural labor force and are responsible for producing almost half of the global agricultural food supply. Since women tend to be disproportionately responsible for taking care of household activities, including the production, purchase, preparation, and allocation of food‐based resources—particularly in the developing world—there is a scholarly consensus that an improvement in women's status has a positive impact on nutritional outcomes. Current scholarship on gender and food security is thus broadly divided into relationships between food security and women's economic freedoms, legal opportunities, and both formal and informal education via improved knowledge of agricultural procedures. In this review, I draw attention to the role that sociologists can play in engaging these topics, and I specifically highlight the need to conduct more cross‐national and longitudinal analyses of women's status and food security. Finally, I point towards recent studies that assess the impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on food security, and suggest the need to explicate the role of gender within such processes.     

Transnational regimes of labor and statelessness: Intersections of citizenship regimes and local norms in East and Southeast Asia

This article offers a review of the literature on transnational labor regimes and statelessness to pursue further theorization from East and Southeast Asian contexts. The main focus is on how local norms (local sense of belonging, local moral code, and local hierarchies) are entangled with national‐level citizenship regimes to legitimate the discrimination of certain people to be statelessness and secure low‐wage migrant workers for the new global labor regime. First, traditional literature on citizenship and statelessness was reviewed; binary theoretical frameworks (including citizens/excluding non‐citizens) based on political recognition were indicated as the main limitations. Second, recent theories arguing for an intersection between national citizenship regimes and a new global labor regime were reviewed. Third, recent theories that illuminate the importance of local contexts in determining citizens' rights were reviewed based on formal exclusion and informal inclusion as well as formal inclusion and informal exclusion. Finally, it was concluded that further theorization is needed on how citizenship regimes and local norms intersect to produce statelessness, securing low‐wage migrant workers for the global labor regime through the global assemblages approach. Through the paper, East and Southeast Asia were illuminated as potentially fruitful research sites for further theorization on the topic.     

Transnational Traders: El Salvador's Women Couriers in Historical Perspective

An estimated one‐third to one‐half of Salvadorans who carry remittances and goods between El Salvador and the United States are women. Scholars studying these viajeras argue that their work simultaneously represents a break from traditional gender relations confining women to the home and an extension of gender traits that favor women in developing social ties. Although social ties are crucial to the courier trade, this argument ignores antecedents to viajeras' work in El Salvador and suggests that transnationalism pushes women into realms of labor and physical mobility that have been gendered masculine. Using ethnographic methods, I examine the relationship between women's historical work in El Salvador and their current work as viajeras, as well the relationship between viajeras' experiences and those of women transnational traders in other parts of the world. My findings contribute to a small but growing body of research suggesting that instead of merely being excluded from or manipulated by global processes, many women in the Global South have expanded the realm of their activities to help shape variable forms of global capitalism. Studying how they do so sheds light on local mechanisms for combating gender inequality and promoting development.     

Social upgrading and cooperative corporate social responsibility in global value chains: the case of Fairphone in China

In this article, we explore how a lead firm's strategy for corporate social responsibility influences the social upgrading of a supplier in a global value chain. Based on a single case study approach, we investigate the interaction between Dutch smartphone producer Fairphone and its Chinese supplier Guohong. On the one hand, the case illustrates how a cooperative approach to corporate social responsibility can lead to progress in suppliers' social upgrading. In particular, we highlight the role of a so‐called workers' welfare fund as a mechanism not only for improving measurable labour standards but also for enabling rights. On the other hand, the case demonstrates how the limited production and technological capabilities of the suppliers, a competitive market environment and lead firms' limited strategic access to the supply chain might constrain the extent of social upgrading through a cooperative approach towards corporate social responsibility in a global value chain.     

Seeing through transparency: Performativity,vision and intent 1

Abstract

This paper engages with debates around transformations in the production and circulation of images and the changes in modes of perception that these offer. Paul Virilio (1991, 1994) has argued that technological developments have produced a shift in the site of meaning‐production from the material reference space of the image (print or celluloid) to the time of visual contact by the viewer. I consider what significance these temporalities have in relation to social difference, and I develop debates around the performative to consider how the viewer is constituted in visual performativity. This focus on time and performativity opens up questions of how vision may constitute the agency, intention and responsibility of the viewer. Drawing on an example of visual irony in advertising, I explore how the temporal suspension of meanings allows for a suspension of the terms of intent and responsibility. This visual performative accesses and reworks the terms of social difference and privilege in what I have called ‘retroactive intentionality’.     

Women Working Worldwide: transnational networks,corporate social responsibility and action research

In this article we trace the history of a new form of labour internationalism that emerged in support of women workers’ organizations, in particular in the garment industry, from the 1980s. We tell the story of the emergence of Women Working Worldwide (WWW), a small UK‐based NGO that provides solidarity and support for a network of women workers’ organizations in the commodity producing zones of the global South. WWW grew along with other organizations that have succeeded in forcing global corporations to take some responsibility for the employment conditions along their supply chains. In what has become corporate social responsibility (CSR), companies now establish codes of conduct and workplace audits of employment conditions in those factories to which they subcontract manufacturing work. WWW played a key part in the establishment of the Clean Clothes Campaign, Labour Behind the Label and the Ethical Trading Initiative that continue to develop such practices today. WWW used the power of transnational networks to ensure that the needs and voices of women workers were put on the agenda for action. The story of WWW demonstrates the potential to effect change through transnational networking, the extent to which different local organizations can find common cause with each other and the benefits of engaging in locally‐focused but transnationally coordinated educational and action research projects.     

‘Now,We Have the Same Rights as Men to Keep Our Jobs’: Gendered Perceptions of Opportunity and Obstacles in a Mexican Workplace

Drawing on extensive qualitative data at a Mexican‐owned multinational corporation, this case study investigates professional employees’ perceptions of changes to a prohibitive work policy requiring women to quit working upon marriage and having children. Employees believed the policy change meant working women were valued employees, but how this translated into opportunity highlighted distinct views of the types of positions professional women could occupy at the company, reinforcing sex‐segregated job allocation. Whereas women's narratives pointed to cultural resistance, men's narratives attributed the dearth of women in higher level positions to their lack of professionalism and commitment to work. The work policy change only guaranteed the right for women to work as the company modernized to fit the neoliberal demands of the global marketplace. Now women faced the challenge of turning that right into career advancement in a traditionally masculine‐defined company. I argue that even with the policy change, gendered discourses on women in professional occupations constructed and maintained gender inequities in the workplace. This study contributes to the scholarly discussion on gendered discourses within the context of global restructuring by showing how mechanisms at work maintain gender inequity in the workplace.     

Fields,networks and frames: advertising social organization in Japan

Abstract In this article I focus on three kinds of overlapping social coordinates — fields, networks and frames — as they are worked out in the day‐to‐day activities of a large Tokyo advertising agency. My aims are threefold. First, to show how the three social forms of fields, networks and frames interlock in a dialectical manner that permits both macro‐ and micro‐levels of sociological analysis. I thus present methodological approaches hitherto perceived to be different in emphases or interests as complementary rather than at odds with one another. Second, I take up and reexamine the notions of network and frame as developed within the specific context of Japanese social organization. Third, I make a statement in favour of anthropological studies of business as a means of understanding how industries and organizations function in a global economy.