1. A globalizing world

2. 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. 2

3. … 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:
 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.
3
Source: A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics, Politics; Edited by David Held (2004).

4. … 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:
4
Source: The Geography of the World Economy; Knox, P. and Agnew, J. (1998).

5. … 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.
5

6. Declining Costs of Everyday Transactions
Industrial Economy Approximate Cost Per
Transaction
Banking
$1.07
eEconomy
$.01
Travel Booking
$10 $2
$6
Trading
$150

7. … it has created a world market dominated
by transnational corporations
 The world market is as old as trade itself, Transnational
Corporations have grown
but in the last 25 years it has developed in importance so much
further and faster than ever before. The that today 51 of the top
total foreign assets of the top 100 100 economies are
transnational corporations totaled $2,453 corporations, not
billion in 2000. In the same year, countries
General Motors was worth more than the (Albert, 2001)
national economy of New Zealand;
 Transnational Corporations are a major Home Base of Top 100 TNCs
(Countries’ shares
force behind globalization as they reach in terms of size of foreign assets, 2000)
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. 7
Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003).

8. … 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; 8

9.  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.
9

10. International Organizations (2002)
Greenland
Finland
Sweden
Iceland
Canada Norway Russia
United Kingdom
Poland
Ireland Czech Rep.
Netherlands
USA Luxemburg Slovakia
Kazakhstan Mongolia
Spain
Japan
Portugal Turkey
Italy China South Korea
Morocco Israel Iraq Iran
Mexico
Algeria Libya Saudi Taiwan
Cuba Egypt Arabia India
Mauritania Kuwait Hong Kong
Mali Niger
Guatemala Chad Sudan
El Salvador Qatar Vietnam
Nicaragua Thailand
Honduras Ethiopia Thailand Philippines
UAE
Costa Rica Venezuela Somalia Malaysia
Panama Nigeria
Colombia Congo Kenya
Singapore
Tanzania
Peru
Angola Indonesia
Nova Guinea
Brazil
Madagascar
Namibia Australia
Chile Mozambique
S. Africa
League of Arab States – Morocco,
Algeria, Mauritania, Libya, Egypt, Argentina
Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Oman, UAE, Qatar, New Zealand
Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and
Palestine Authority
Free Trade Area of the Americas Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
G8 Countries – Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK African Union
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
and U.S. (GDP of $21,136 million or
European Union (EU) Other countries and territories
10
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
67% of the world’s GDP)
Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003).

11. A World of Protests
(Sites of Major Anti-globalization Demonstrations Since 1999)
Montreal
April 2001
Göteborg
June 2000
Prague
September 2000
Seattle Davos
November 1999 January 2000 Seoul
October 2000
Bangkok
February 2000
.. .
. Washington D.C.
April 2000
Bologna
Honolulu June 2000
May 2001
Melbourne
Porto Alegre Naples September 2000
January 2001 March 2001
G-8 Member Genoa
Countries July 2001
11
Source: “The Globalization Backlash,” John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, Foreign Policy.

12. … 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;
Europe
18
Greenland
Telephone lines per 100 Finland
people, 2001
Iceland Sweden
70 or more Canada
Norway Russia
Asia
50 - 69 United
3
Kingdom Italy
Austria
30 - 49 Ireland
Slovenia
Netherlands
10 - 29 USA Luxemburg Greece Kazakhstan Mongolia
Spain
1-9 Portugal Japan
Israel
China
under 1 Mexico
Morocco Iran Taiwan
Algeria Libya Egypt Saudi
no data Cuba Arabia
India Hong Kong
Mauritania Mali Niger
Guatemala Chad Sudan Thailand
Nicaragua El Salvador
Personal Honduras Ethiopia Malaysia
Costa Rica
computers per 100 Panama Nigeria
Kenya
Colombia Congo Singapore Nova Guinea
people, 2001 estimates Tanzania
Indonesia
Americas Angola
More than 75 cell 27
Peru Brazil
Madagascar
Namibia
phone subscribers per Mozambique Australia
100 people
Oceania
Africa S. Africa 40
Chile 1
Argentina New Zealand
12
Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003).

13. … 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. 13
Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003).

14. … 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?
14

15.  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%.
Europe
• net migration 0.8 million
• 54 million migrants
excluding refugees
Greenland
North America Finland
Iceland Sweden
• net migration Canada
Norway Russia
1.4 million United
Kingdom
• 40 million migrants
excluding refugees Ireland Czech Rep.
Netherlands Slovakia
Luxemburg Kazakhstan Mongolia
USA Spain
South Korea
Portugal Turkey
Italy Japan
Morocco Israel Iraq China Asia
Mexico Iran
Libya Taiwan
Algeria Egypt Saudi
Cuba Arabia India Hong Kong • net migration
Cross-border Migration Mauritania 1.3 million
Mali Niger
Guatemala Sudan Thailand • 41 million migrants
(foreign-born population El Salvador Chad Vietnam
Nicaragua excluding refugees
excluding refugees as a Honduras Ethiopia
Malaysia
Costa Rica Venezuela
percentage of total Panama Nigeria
Somalia
population, 2000 Colombia Congo
Kenya
Singapore
Tanzania
Nova Guinea
50.0% and over Indonesia
Angola
20.0% - 49.9% Peru Brazil
Namibia Australia
Oceania
5.0% - 19.9%
1.0% - 4.9% Latin America & Caribbean • net migration
Africa 0.09 million
Under 1.0% • net migration 0.5 million • 6 million migrants
• net migration excluding refugees
• 6 million migrants Argentina New Zealand
0.5 million
excluding refugees • 13 million migrants
excluding refugees 15
Source: The Penguin State of the World, Dan Smith with Ane Braein (2003); International Organization for Migration, 2001.

16. … 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)
16
U.S. – Mexican Border, The New York Times

17. …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.
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