Labors of Globalization: Emergent State Responses

Abstract

This paper seeks to add to a growing body of empirical research on state transformation due to processes of economic globalization, in particular the assertion of state policy over areas where control at first seems to be “eroded”. We examine the process of global labor migration, a process that is both fundamentally transnational and the target of concentrated state appropriation. Scholars have only recently begun to recognize the extent to which developing states actively seek to encourage and facilitate migration to generate external finance through remittances, thereby creating a globalized national workforce. Yet far from a vision of international worker solidarity, this global workforce is being increasingly integrated into new national projects, where diasporic communities are cultivated and constructed within the discursive framework of the nation, reconfiguring the national concept to include diasporas. Whether through remittances, overseas voting rights, dual citizenship laws, hometown associations or investment/development schemes, migration transforms states and states transform migration. This brings into stark relief the tensions between sovereignty, transnationalism, and nationalism and shows how states are transforming themselves, but not under conditions of their own making.