Globalization is a process that affects the traditional
territorial political space and its associated claim to sovereignty. It
represents implications like the decline in the significance of territoriality
and state structures, yet it also implies an increase and amplification of
worldwide connectedness as well as the consciousness of the phenomenon. As
Anthony Giddens defines it, globalization is “the intensification of worldwide
social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local
happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”
(Giddens, 1990, 64).
Seeing it in a wider perspective, globalization connotes
new practices and dynamics. Greater emphasis on capitalist integration is being
experienced by the global population that may be seen in three principal ways:
1) global market discipline; 2) flexible accumulation through global webs and;
3) financial innovations. The essence of global market discipline is observed
in the process by which economic agents internalize dominant standards of
price, quality, and efficiency in worldwide context and apply them to their
domestic markets. Flexible accumulation through global webs is described as the
practice of establishing repetitive production (routine production) through the
firms’ capacity to install and operate anywhere around the world in real time,
and to maintain a close network structure of affiliated firms and production
units ready to meet production requirements. Lastly, global financial
innovation is the result of a growth in financial transactions that is higher
that the growth of production and trade (Hoogvelt, 1997).
In Giddens’ point of view, social practices such as
international labor practices are classified as under the different dimensions
of globalization, in addition to its role in the intensification of capitalism.
He identifies the international division of labor as the world capitalist
economy, the world military order and the nation-state system (1990). International
migration in all was just the second category.
Migration has been a key element that is influenced by
globalization; however, it has seldom been equated in the analysis, has been
rarely considered in discussions of globalization, or if they do, they deal
with international migration only as a residual category, an afterthought
(Stalker, 2000). Labor in any form, is often neglected in analyses concerning
the levels of economic integration, this has implications for economic
policymaking and development for it fails to considers labor as one of several
significant indicators.
Recent set of studies has sought to include as well as
recognize labor as a key factor in facilitating global economic integration,
for example, distinguishes various dimensions in which labor is connected to
the global economy, as a factor taken or ignored by capital expansion, trade
intensification, or wage differentiation. An interpretation of globalization in
the context of migration is presented by Saskia Sassen (1996, 1999) which
argues that a prevailing tension exist between the nation-state’s control of
the borders and cross-border flows, and the enforcement of human rights and
compliance with international norms.
In Mittleman’s analyses of labor, he describes the current
global political economy as composed by “a spatial reorganization of production
among world regions, large-scale flows of migration among and within them,
complex networks that connect production processes, buyers and sellers, and the
emergence of transnational cultural structures that facilitate among these
processes. As a response to his framework he calls the “global division of
labor and power”, migration emerges in developing countries with people seeking
better opportunities in industrialized countries by joining labor-intensive
activities which does not require much skill. This cross-flow of migration, in
effect, produces economic effects in the labor-exporting countries.
Labor and its mobility is a fact of life notwithstanding
outstanding policies and barriers of migration. Prakash and Hart, who believed
that the incorporation of labor as a key category in analyses relating to
economic integration, proposed three measures of integration of labor markets
in the global economy: 1) the proportion of foreigners in the domestic
workforce; 2) the ratio of the “domestic workforce in export-dependent
industries and employed by domestic affiliates of foreign multinational
enterprises and; 3) remittances. They argue that through remittances which
contribute to the home country’s GNP and provide a valuable foreign exchange
rates, migration, particularly labor mobility, facilitates economic
integration. (Prakash & Hart, 2000)
Worker remittances are defined as that quantity of
currency that migrants “earn abroad and then send home to their families and
communities (Kane, 1995). Adding the effects of remittances to the analysis of
economic globalization produces a different pattern of economic behaviour. In
some instances, evidence of the scope and depth of international labor dynamics
can complement the traditional indicators of trade and investment.
In a nutshell, neglecting the focus on labor dynamics as
a factor in economic integration can misrepresent economic performance or
distort measures of key economic indicators. It is therefore important to
consider migration, specifically relating to labor mobility in economic
globalization analyses.
References
Giddens,
Anthony. 1990. The consequences of
modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hoogvelt,
Ankie. 1997. Globalization and the
postcolonial world: the new political economy of development. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kane,
Hal. 1995. The hour of departure: forces
that create refugees and migrants. Washington: World Watch Institute.
Mittleman,
James. 2000. The globalization syndrome:
transformation and resistance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Orozco,
Manuel. 2001. Globalization and
migration: the impact of family remittances in Latin America. Miami:
Florida International University.
Prakash,
Aseem. Et. al. 2000. Indicators of Economic Integration. Global governance 6, 1 (January-March): 95-104.
Sassen,
Saskia. 1996. Losing control: sovereignty
in an age of globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.
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