False Economy: Financialization,Crises and Socio‐Economic Polarisation

Over the last few decades, a range of profound and widely recognised changes have affected the global economy and global labour markets, driven by a growing imbalance of power between financier dominated capital and labour, a scenario facilitated by the extended availability of labour due to the process of globalisation of itself and, to some degree, by labour supplanting technologies (Standing, 2011, Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2011). However, arguably, what is less clearly understood is that the financial sector's role in this overall process and, indeed, increasing power rests to no small extent on its capacity to ‘conjure’ wealth from credit creation and, often, opaque practices that are highly abstracted and/or only tenuously connected to real economic activity (Korten, 2009). This shift, and the latter in particular, it is argued, in addition to producing a sequence of financial crises culminating (thus far) with the crash and recession of 2007/8, has fundamental implications for the future shape of the global economy, labour markets and, as a consequence, the life chances and opportunities that potentially confront succeeding generations, assuming that trends continue on their present course. This piece considers these issues with particular emphasis on their implications for the UK and its citizens.     

Mode 4 trade in services: promoting temporary labour mobility via the trade détour?

A comprehensive process of the liberalisation of trade and capital flows notwithstanding, neoliberal globalisation has not been equally successful in freeing the international movement of labour. With the General Agreement on Trade in Services, (GATS), the WTO set up a novel legal framework within the domain of trade politics that includes the cross-border movement of natural persons to deliver services, labelled Mode 4, thus aiming at the promotion of temporary labour mobility. This article seeks to explain the emergence of Mode 4 and its subsequent development as the outcome of a particular politics of scale motivated by the interests of transnational capital as well as the strategic selectivity of specific institutional terrains. The result has been a compromise that restricts Mode 4 liberalisation to highly qualified personnel only.     

Globalisation, the nation‐state and global society

This article examines the notion that globalisation has resulted in the decline of the nation‐state. It argues that during most of its history globalisation was in fact associated with the rise of the nation‐state through the construction of overseas empires that extended and strengthened it. The development of global political organization has reinforced the nation‐state through the growth of international organizations based on the principle of national sovereignty. It is transnational flows, networks, and organizations that have challenged the authority of the nation‐state. These do not, however, float in a global limbo but are always rooted in and dependent upon some nation‐state or other. Transnational movements can embarrass nation‐states but have little real impact upon them and challenge them far less than did the nationally based labour movements that have been undermined by globalisation. Some see globalisation as leading to a global society transcending national units but this view overlooks the continued importance of national institutions and international relationships, and the emergence of strong regional organizations, in a society that is essentially multi‐level rather than global in character.     

Introduction to the special theme: theorizing transnational labour markets

In this introduction to the special themed section, ‘Theorizing transnational labour markets: economic‐sociological approaches’, I introduce the reader to the topic and give an overview of the four contributions. The terms ‘global labour market’ and ‘transnational labour market’ are broadly used to account for contemporary social phenomena as diverse as the ever‐closer integration of China or India, with their huge labour forces, into the world economy, the off‐shoring of specific operations of MNCs to countries with cheap labour, or cross‐border labour migration. In most of these cases, the existence of global or transnational labour markets is taken for granted by the media, consulting agencies and other economic actors. However, scholars in labour market research and cross‐border migration alike have largely ignored the categories of global or transnational labour markets. Thus far, it remains unclear what these terms really mean and how we should address them theoretically. The aim of this themed section, therefore, is to view cross‐border labour migration through an economic‐sociological lens and thus bring into dialogue migration and labour market scholarship. By introducing a transnational perspective into labour market research, we hope to make a useful contribution towards theorizing on cross‐border labour markets and thereby overcome the methodological nationalism that seems to have crept into this area of scholarship.     

The political economy of fraud in a globalised industry: the case of seafarers' certifications

This paper reports on the first systematic and international investigation of the fraudulent trade in seafarers’ certifications of competence. The shipping industry more than any other traditional industry has been transformed by globalisation, so that there is now effectively a single global labour market for seafarers. International regulation of labour standards in the industry is extensive, but so is regulatory avoidance. This paper seeks to investigate the political economy of fraud, through an exploration of the links between economic features of the globalised shipping industry and regulatory avoidance of labour standards.     

From rural plantations to urban slums: The economic status and problems of East Indians in Kingston,Jamaica, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

East Indian labourers imported into Jamaica in the post‐emancipation period were located primarily on sugar‐cane and banana plantations in the rural areas of the island. Indeed, the majority remained rural dwellers even after the expiration of their restrictive indentured contracts. The search for higher rewards for labour in terms of real wages and general well‐being, however, impelled a small proportion of time‐expired Indians to the urban section of the plantation economy. There they faced a multiplicity of problems as they struggled to achieve upward social mobility through greater capital accumulation.     

The rational kernel within Samir Amin’s mythological shell: the idea of a democratic and pluralist world political party

ABSTRACT

Amin’s Leninist-Maoist vision is unlikely to be persuasive to twenty-first century citizens. Nonetheless, there is a rational kernel in Amin’s call for a new worldwide political organization. Some structures, mechanisms and tendencies of the capitalist world economy are relatively enduring and some patterns recurrent, although the world economy is also fluid, constantly changing and evolving. Although waves of globalization have radically transformed human societies and their economic activities during the past 500 years also in many positive ways, the expansion of the international society and world economy has often been characterized by violence, imperial subjection and colonial expropriation and exclusion. There is a rational kernel also within Amin’s analysis of the current world-political situation. Command over space and time by investors and megacorporations is power. Emancipation aims at freedom from domination. The decline of the World Social Forum indicates that progressive politics must move ‘beyond the concept of a discussion forum’. My argument is that emancipation from unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted sources of determination requires global transformative agency and planetary visions about alternatives.     

Uneven Development and Local Inequality in the U.S. South: The Role of Outside Investment,Landed Elites,and Racial Dynamics

This paper develops a historically contingent understanding of patterns of uneven economic development in the U.S. South. We conceptualize spatial variation in economic development and its consequences for inequality to be embedded in both local and international dynamics. The character of local economic development, it is argued, reflects the organizational base and heterogeneity of local elites, the divisions and relative power of nonelites, and the embeddedness of the local political economy in national and world systems of politics and production. These ideas are developed and made historically and spatially specific through an analysis of uneven development in one Southern state, North Carolina. Our findings suggest that contemporary patterns of uneven development and the resulting income deprivations and inequality reflect conditional interactions between elite economic projects and racial divisions within the working class. We find that outside investment seems to reproduce rather than disrupt local patterns of inequality and poverty.     

International migration,international relations and foreign policy

Recent literature on migration, international relations, and foreign policy is reviewed in this article, stressing applications of global systems paradigms, studies of state entry and exit rules, and anatomies of domestic policy-setting processes on migration. After a concise assessment of the contemporary theory of global political economy, the paper argues for seeking mid-range generalizations on the international relations of migration. It also suggests that analysis begin with the policy-setting processes of the state. Especially through the use of comparative perspectives available from domestic policy making studies and from the field of international comparative public policy, this approach offers the opportunity to fix empirically the political roles of transnational social forces, which often present themselves as participants in domestic policy contests. Promising future directions in the study of state-to-state relations are also evaluated, with the anticipation that verifying regional or other intermediate patterns of world migration politics may contribute to more general theories of international political economy.     

Sklair,L. The Icon Project: Architecture,Cities and Capitalist Globalization 2017 New York: Oxford University Press 352 pp. £26.49 (hardback) ISBN: 9780190464189

Architecture embeds capital. Theoretical and empirical sociology has addressed a wide variety of social contexts with the aim of illuminating how architecture provides both i) the sites and settings in which labour relations are manifest; and ii) a symbolic intervention that sees accumulation and power celebrated. Against this backdrop, Leslie Sklair's book The Icon Project: Architecture, Cities and Capitalist Globalization contributes significantly to our understanding of how architecture is entangled with the contemporary operation of international capital. Sklair's account argues that iconic architecture ‐ those landscape‐dominating buildings designed by so‐called ‘starchitects’ who are famous in their own right and have a strong aesthetic brand‐exists through and for the further generation of surplus value. Particularly sociological in orientation, The Icon Project adds much to our understanding of the architectural celebration of the transnational consumption and production practices that underpin deeply uneven cities the world over.     

Engendering Global Democracy

The inadequacies of hegemonic liberal democratic ideas and institutions have been exposed by feminist theorists focusing on the marginalisation of women and by global theorists examining the impact of globalisation. These theorists have developed two distinct sets of reconstructive strategies that, until very recently, have remained in ignorance of each other. Further, both feminist and global democratic schemes have been dogged by problems in terms of their theorisation of power, politics, agency and change. Recent feminist arguments about citizenship and governance go some way to bringing together concerns about gender inequality and globalisation, but they remain centred on states and the states-system as vehicles for democratic representation and participation. This article argues that a more radical reconstructive strategy can be derived from debates about the democratisation of feminism itself. Drawing on the responses of black and third world feminists to racism in the white-dominated feminist movement, and examining their influence on efforts to organise transnationally, the article points to innovative ways of thinking about power, politics, agency and change. Together these amount to a democratic framework which has applicability beyond feminist organising and which confronts the marginalisations of both gender and globalisation.     

Emigration and development: the case of a Bangladeshi village

This article examines the developmental consequences of international labour migration in a Bangladeshi village. The data are from Hoglakandi, a village 30 kilometres south-east of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. A structured questionnaire with both open-ended and closed category questions was used among 50 Singapore returnees, supplemented with additional in-depth interviews. International labour migration has often been seen by many sending countries as a short cut to development because of its role in unemployment relief, balance of payments relief, and capital formation at national level. The study argues that the causes and effects of emigration can better be understood only when the process is placed within its local context, since what may prove to be advantageous at the national level may prove to be detrimental to a household or community or vice-versa. It demonstrates how the contribution of labour migration is merely the transformation of labour into a structural component of the international political economy. The Hoglakandi experience reveals that labour migration does not fuel the local economy from an external pipeline of remittances and skill acquisition, rather it drains local resources that retard the development.     

Modernization,neo-liberal globalization,or variegated development: the Indian food system transformation in comparative perspective

This paper discusses the question of when generalizations risk compromising the utility and accuracy of a theory and seeks to show how a balance can be struck between generalized and context-specific analyses in disciplines like international sociology, political economy, and comparative politics. For this purpose, the paper reviews three theoretical approaches to agri-food system change, placed at different levels on the ladder of generality. It then considers these approaches in relation to India's changing agri-food system. Finally, the paper discusses the general and the particularistic features of the Indian case and examines their implications for theories relating to global governance and international political economy.     

莫斯科的国际中心城市地位研究

20世纪90年代,莫斯科的政治、经济和社会结构经历了重大变革,改变了莫斯科的国家地位和国际排名。本文研究莫斯科在俄罗斯国内和在欧洲城市中的地位。毫无疑问,莫斯科的发展特点是：在逐渐脱离国家城市体系的同时,也逐渐朝着国际方向发展。以经济指标来衡量,莫斯科在国内找不到竞争对手。它远远领先于国内其他城市,因为这些城市正快速融入国内和区域经济的潮流,只在很小的程度上参与经济全球化。相反,莫斯科越来越多地争取融入跨国公司和国际经济体系的行列。虽然莫斯科作为一个国际性城市的概念往往只是城市的政治工具,但事实上,如果俄罗斯的首都想要融入世界,其资本是有限的。从中欧的角度来看,目前莫斯科最重要的功能,是连结中欧、西欧和俄罗斯。但现实是,莫斯科与俄罗斯其他城市之间的差距将会继续扩大。     

Changing family structures of Nepalese transmigrants in Japan: split‐households and dual‐wage earners

Abstract Based on surveys and interviews conducted in Japan and Nepal, this study of Nepalese labour migration to Japan examines the changing patterns of family responses to international migration, the increasing participation of married women in the global labour force, and the implications of these changes for households, communities and the Nepalese economy. The split‐household family has long supported sojourning males of Tibeto–Burman linguistic groups as Gurkha soldiers in Indian and British Armies before returning to Nepal upon retirement. As women have increasingly left Nepal to take advantage of overseas employment, a pattern of husband–wife migration has emerged, with children being left in the hands of relatives – the dual‐wage earner family. Thus, Nepal has recently witnessed the development of transnational families and individuals whose work, residence and life trajectories extend beyond the nation‐state.     

In the wake of the wave: globalization,networks, and the experiences of transmigrant seafarers in northern Germany

Abstract In this article we highlight the plight of workers trapped at the interface between the national and the global: able to participate in global labour markets but marginalized within nation‐states and excluded from local communities. We employ ethnographic field work to explore the experiences of transmigrant seafarers who travelled to northern Germany between the 1960s and 1980s in search of work aboard German flagged vessels. We describe how the economic benefits associated with an international labour market for seafarers initially attracted and benefited them but then left them stranded as the labour market changed and became globalized. In the article we draw on Massey's concept of power‐geometry to interpret the dual processes of globalization and exclusion.     

Understanding 2016: China,Brexit and Trump in the history of uneven and combined development

This article uses the theory of uneven and combined development (U&CD) to produce a novel explanation of ‘Brexit and Trump’ – the two shock political events of 2016. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we identify the global conjuncture of historical unevenness in which the votes occurred: how the neoliberal transformation of the advanced capitalist countries was synchronized with the radically different process of primitive accumulation in China. Second, we apply the theory of U&CD to this peculiar ‘simultaneity of the non‐simultaneous’: the ‘big country’ effects of China's industrialization, we find, were thrice multiplied by its combination with the advanced sectors of the world economy, which accelerated China's take‐off, brought forward its export phase, and widened its export profile at a moment of maximum openness in international trade. Finally, this produced the pattern of development that led to the events of 2016: the resultant trade shocks intensified the internal inequalities of British and American societies in ways that match the geography of the Leave and Trump votes. The analysis has a wider intellectual implication too, for the phenomena of historical unevenness and combination are intrinsic to the history of the global political economy; and the theory of U&CD therefore has a unique contribution to make to the field of International Political Economy.     

Global value chains in international knowledge work: networks,stratifications and labour markets

In this article, I aim to cast light on the arguably indeterminate phenomenon of the global labour market (GLM) by placing the focus on an industry that has sometimes been perceived as epitomizing homogeneity and ‘world flatness’ in its deployment of geographically dispersed knowledge workers, that of international software development. Engaging in a sanguine analysis of this industry with reference to an empirical study of outsourcing to Ukraine it is revealed that labour markets servicing ICT (Information and communication technology) are subject to deep, if fluctuating, social stratifications. With reference to the notion of the global value chain (GVC), 1 1 ¹GVC analysis focuses on the governance patterns and relational dynamics between lead and supplier firms at the sectoral level. The GVC and its predecessor, the global commodity chain (GCC) focus on the inter‐firm linkages and especially power relations between different actors (Feuerstein 2013). The similar concept of global production network (GPN) concerns the broader set of relations of power, positionality and value capture between all relevant firm and extra firm actors within a network (Thompson 2013). For this study on sourcing in the global software industry, the term GVC will be utilized throughout.
the significance of factors such as knowledge, language, citizenship and age as labour market differentiators for knowledge work is brought to the fore.     

Are we ready for them? Overseas-qualified social workers' professional cultural transition

Developing sociocultural competence in a new country is essential for migrants practising social work within new and distinct cultures. An argument for interventions needed to support the cultural transitioning of a migrant social work workforce is made, informed by findings from a mixed methods study of the experiences of overseas-qualified social workers in New Zealand. One of the main findings relates to migrant social workers' professional adaptation to the new environment. We focus the discussion here on how the perceptions and practices regarding the cultural dimensions of the transition informed their adaptation. Although this is a highly contextual example of social work practice in a foreign setting, the dynamics have equivalents in many international contexts as migration of labour is common globally. We argue that a greater focus on the migrant workforce is required in debates on globalisation. The discussion of the findings will highlight the need for culturally informed interventions to enable an increasingly global workforce to successfully make a professional cultural transition.     

Introduction: global knowledge and advocacy networks

As global and regional networks proliferate, one important aspect of their operations has been the exchange of knowledge, information and expertise. ‘Global knowledge networks’ have become important components of the global political economy. Within these networks key knowledge institutions and actors can be development agencies, foundations, think‐tanks, universities, consultancy firms as well as individual experts and academics. A primary mechanism for the spread of their knowledge has been through global and regional networks. The article evaluates first, concepts of networks, especially the epistemic community and transnational issue network frameworks; second, theories about international diffusion of ideas; and third, some of the literature on the links between ideas and politics. Control over knowledge and information is important to policy making. Additionally, the status and prestige associated with scholarly expertise and professional training is politically empowering for individual experts consulted or co‐opted into policy making. Yet, norms and values cannot be divorced from ‘scientific advice’ especially when knowledge gains greater impact through advocacy and alliance with societal forces.