Global Restructuring Research Articles

Mujeres en el Cruce: Remapping Border Security through Migrant Mobility

There is little doubt that the migration of women out of Latin America has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. Their increased participation in the labor market is best understood in the context of global restructuring in what been referred to as the feminization of international migration (Ramirez, Garcia Dominguez, and Miguez Morais 2005). Yet, little is known about their actual migration experiences. We know, for example, that migration for women is becoming increasingly hazardous. Recent research on human remains recovered in the Tucson sector since 1991 by researchers at the Binational Migration Institute at the University of Arizona1 has not only determined that migrant deaths due to exposure have increased since 1994, when harsher measures to enforce the border between the United States and Mexico border were implemented, but also that women migrants, when controlling for age (younger than 18 years of age), are 2.70 times more likely to die of exposure than all other causes when compared to men (Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006). The hazards inherent in the migration process were also brought to public attention in March 2007 with an outbreak of armed violence in Arizona, allegedly between rival bands of human smugglers. Five undocumented immigrants, two of them women, were killed in these incidents (Quinn and McCombs 2007). Other types of risks including greater reliance on coyotes (Donato et al. 2008), abandonment in the desert (O’Leary 2008, 2009a) have also only recently become more visible. Since 1993 there have been several high-profile cases of sexual assault against migrant women by Border Patrol agents (Cieslak 2000; Falcon 2001; Steller 2001; Urquijo-Ruiz 2004). These highly publicized cases have been instrumental in raising public questions about the risks migrant women face and how common they are. These issues inspired the research project “Women at the Intersection: Immigration Enforce-

First Time Days and the Development Life: Afro-Costa Rican Narrative Memory and the Critique of Racial Inequality in Global Restructuring

Afro-Costa Ricans in Puerto Viejo critique the injuries of the economic transition from agriculture to tourism during the past three decades. I use the term ‘narrative memory’ to draw on the insights of Fields and Benjamin, describing the interpretive framework created by remembering and the place where the subject dialectically constructs the past and present. Narrative memory creates an inheritance of understandings, emotion, and analysis through which to understand the here and now. Narratives of ‘first time days’ define Puerto Viejo as a space characterized as formerly Afro-Caribbean, economically prosperous, and collaborative. These recollections contrast with the present (‘now days’), demonstrating that nostalgia is not an elite act to be easily dismissed, but rather an important diagnostic tool for actors to critique the racial inequalities generated by global restructuring.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Gender and Employment: A Global Lens on Feminist Analyses and Theorizing of Labor Markets

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Gender and Employment: A Global Lens on Feminist Analyses and Theorizing of Labor Markets

The Anglo-American Model of Economic Organization and Governance: Entropy and the Fragmentation of Social Solidarity in Twenty-first Century Latvia

The collapse of Latvia's economy in 2009 and the protests that ensued raise fundamental questions about the results of the transition in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse. Explaining the significance of these events requires an analysis situating these developments into the global restructuring of the world-system that has occurred since the 1970s when the Bretton Woods Consensus and its model of accumulation and political organization broke down. This article endeavors to reveal insights about the recent unrest by embedding them within a broader political economy (both locally and globally) that articulates the connections between different regimes of accumulation and governance and their respective degrees of social solidarity. Additionally, this article ends by placing the recent demonstrations within three defined categories of protests in the modern era and their conjuncture with crisis of accumulation present since the 1970s. Lastly, this article posits that Latvia's transiti...

Is Japanese education the “exception”?: examining the situated articulation of neo-liberalism through the analysis of policy keywords

This article builds on the author's earlier work, published in Vol. 28 No. 1 of this journal, that critiqued the Orientalist legacy in Anglo-American discussions of Japanese education. One of the manifestations of this legacy is the prevailing view among the Anglo-American observers of Japanese education that Japanese education is the “exception” to the recent global restructuring movement. This article problematizes this view by exposing a similar but differently articulated structural change in Japanese education over the past three decades. Drawing on cultural studies and critical discourse analysis, the author focuses on the two policy keywords that the Ministry of Education has consistently used by for the past three decades: kosei (individuality) and yutori (low pressure). Tracing the complex histories of articulation and rearticulation of these policy keywords, the author demonstrates how the keywords, which had been associated with progressive political struggles against the Ministry's central control of public education, were mobilized to reconstitute people's common sense about education and thus to naturalize the radical systemic change towards the neo-liberal, post-welfare settlement. In conclusion, the author discusses the implication of the study to the field of comparative and international education, calling for a more critical, reflexive engagement with the field's preoccupation with “national differences”.

Australian children's accounts of the closure of a car factory: global restructuring and local impacts

This paper presents children's accounts from Adelaide, South Australia about parental job losses from automotive manufacturing, an industry that is being restructured globally. The research is informed by the ‘new sociology of childhood’ and nests within a longitudinal, mixed-method study of 372 displaced workers. We interviewed 35 boys and girls aged 4 to 19 from 16 families. Findings support calls for children's voices to be heard. Many children did not see the job loss as a major problem; some felt they now had a better life and many valued not moving for new work. While some reported social, health, and financial impacts, others were shielded by parents. Parents consented to their children's involvement in 23% of in-scope families and those who had moved interstate were not included. Nevertheless, the children's accounts contribute a better understanding of adult domains, including the value of family-friendly work patterns; they also highlight the benefits of including children's perspectives on social and economic change. Economic and policy contexts that may have limited the job loss impact include the welfare state, trade unions, a low unemployment rate, and government intervention to manage job loss.

Gender and Employment: A Global Lens on Feminist Analyses and Theorizing of Labor Markets

AbstractThis review of feminist analyses and theorizing of labor markets uses a global lens to reveal the forces shaping gender inequality. The review focuses on the increasing dominance of services primarily in the liberal market economies of the United States and the United Kingdom along with examples from Asia where restructuring has shifted locations of work and affected new ways of working by a diverse and mobile workforce. Labor market restructuring through commodification of care, outsourcing of household tasks and informalization of employment affects the complexity of relationships between and the interconnectedness of social inequalities transnationally and in global cities. Place matters when analyzing how service employment alters divisions of labor and how these labor market changes are gendered. Global restructuring not only poses new challenges but also creates new opportunities for mobilization around a more robust notion of equality.

Determinants of Office Rents in the Istanbul Metropolitan Area

From the 1980s onwards, restructuring of economy and globalization has increased the number and size of companies in Istanbul and demand for office space accordingly. Indeed, Istanbul has become an attractive location for the international business firms due to its strategic location between Europe and Asia. Since the old CBD did not have sufficient space for the modern office building, multi-centre developments in Istanbul with different locational and physical characteristics were established. This study investigates the factors which effect office rents by the use of hedonic price analysis. According to the results of the analysis, the number of floors of the buildings is the most important factor to affect office rents. Other factors according to their importance are as follows: vacancy rate in the vicinity, social facilities in the buildings, aesthetics of the buildings, rental office floor, banks in the vicinity, and accessibility. On the other hand, management cost, age, view and distances to the old CBD and the major highways are not fund significant since these sub-centers are already located on major highways. The results of the study can be useful for the investors, real estate agents, urban planners, architects and policy makers. For further research, time series analysis of office rents is suggested.

The Globalization of Economic Production and International Migration

This article empirically investigates the relationship between the globalization of economic production and international migration by focusing on the case of Mexico. We describe undocumented Mexican migration to the US in the context of global economic restructuring and review previous studies. We then apply a multilevel modeling technique to retrospective data gathered by the Mexican Migration Project in order to test whether the density of manufacturing operations in Mexican communities explains variation in individuals' odds of making an undocumented migration to the US in the previous five years. The analysis indicates that higher densities of manufacturing operations are associated with lower odds of undocumented migration, net of controls. Moreover, this effect is stronger in Mexican communities located in northern border states. We discuss the findings in the context of previous research and elaborate on potential future research directions.

‘Paying for the Emergency by displacing the settlers’: global coffee and rural restructuring in late colonial Kenya

AbstractGlobal coffee markets entered into a deep cyclical downturn from the mid 1950s. As producers, notably Brazil and Colombia, continued to increase their output, intense struggles arose among global competitors for larger slices of a contracting market. The prospect of an economic catastrophe, following the release of Brazil's surplus stocks, preoccupied Kenya's colonial government, which was dependent on tax revenues derived from coffee sales, and was less able to support the settler-dominated industry in the face of the increased costs incurred by the Mau Mau Emergency after 1952. This left European settlers exposed, with many barely able to recover their costs of production. What began as a counter-insurgency strategy, by allowing an elite of African farmers to grow Arabica coffee (a privilege formerly reserved to settlers) was enlarged and accelerated in response to unrelenting global market pressures. These compelled the colonial government to beckon low-cost African farmers into coffee production, in a bid to save its tax base and ensure the survival of the coffee sector. Even though the Coffee Marketing Board confiscated much of their income, African farmers proved well able to rally family labour and achieve surpluses. Rationalization of production and the re-organization of the commodity chain to maintain high quality at lower cost were decisive in both reconfiguring the economic and social relationships that underpinned Kenya's independence in 1963 and securing the country's place on the world market. The aim here is to explain the crisis, and its grip on Kenya's economy during the transition to independence and beyond.

Global Restructuring of Value Chains and Class Issues

Ce texte s’interesse aux transformations des chaines de valeur et a leur incidence sur les competences, les identites professionnelles, les positions de classe et la conscience de classe. Les auteurs soulignent que la codification des connaissances tacites et la standardisation des processus de travail sont des preconditions pour la restructuration. Elles conduisent a une modularisation des competences et processus de travail, en leur permettant d’etre reconfigures spatialement et contractuellement et se traduisent par une transformation dans les identites professionnelles traditionnelles. Le texte repose sur une recherche qualitative aupres des travailleurs associes a des pratiques d’emploi telemediatises, recherche realisee dans le cadre de projets europeens Emergence et Works.

Scalar tensions in the governance of waste: the resilience of state spatial Keynesianism

There has been a heightened interest in the ‘region’ as a key site of economic activities. While regionalisation is often explained as part of the wider process of state scalar strategy in response to global economic restructuring, less attention has been paid to the role of the region in rescaling of environmental governance. This paper aims to fill the gap by drawing on the changing governance of municipal waste planning in the UK. Such a focus demonstrates that key elements of ‘spatial Keynesianism’ have been carried through, rather than superseded, in ‘the new metropolitan reform’. Following a brief summary of the municipal waste problem and the influence of the EU regulatory measures in changing waste policy in the UK, the paper situates the regional institution building for waste planning in its historical and conceptual context. It then discusses the key rationales for regionalisation of waste in order to substantiate the central argument of the paper which is: the resilience of some of the key features of spatial Keynesianism in the new wave of metropolitan reforms. The final part of the paper unpicks the inherent tensions in state rescaling strategy and outlines the key factors that undermine the capacity of the state's reconfigured regional institutions to achieve their prescribed goals.

Assessing Employment Risk: New Dimensions in the Measurement of Unemployment.

The contemporary era has increasingly come to be characterized as a ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992). This idea underlies a growing sense of insecurity that large segments of the population feel and experience. Much of this increased insecurity is the consequence of global economic restructuring and the retrenchment of the ‘social security state’ (Hahnel, 2005; Eliott and Atkinson, 1998; and Wolman and Colamosca, 1997). The problem of growing economic risk was the subject of a recent International Labour Organization (ILO) report which concluded that economic security was out of reach for the majority of the globe’s workers creating a ‘world of anxiety and anger’ (2004a). Even in the developed world neoliberal inspired policies and restructuring have enhanced economic vulnerability as the divide between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ grows (Burke, Mooers & Shields, 2000). “Work risk” is an important, if not central, facet of economic risk.

What Will States Really Do For Us? The Human Rights Enterprise and Pressure from Below

International human rights standards and treaties have been plagued with disputes over the relevance and power of international law with regard to state sovereignty. ! ese disputes commonly result in states’ failure to realize the rights and standards outlined by such human rights instruments. What if states cannot or will not provide fundamental dignities to their people? Moreover, how does global restructuring a ect states’ ability to implement human rights? We explore these questions through what we call the “human rights enterprise,” which includes confl icts between rulers and the ruled over the realization of human rights practice. As such, human rights are often developed through the struggles of grassroots organizations and non-elites from below, not simply from the compassionate actions of states to respect their international agreements.

Social Compacts in Regional and Global Perspective

This article addresss four issues related to the emergence of new social compacts. It discusses various attempts to theorize and conceptualize the notions of globalization and global and regional governance. It then looks at the transformation from welfare to workfare and examines the impact of global restructuring on labour and social conditions. Examples of the distributional consequences and resulting inequality, poverty, and unemployment are provided. This process has had an important impact on the emergence of reactive regional social compacts based on various forms of negotiated contracts. Finally, the article explores new, proactive attempts to challenge the existing dogma of neo-liberal governance.

Managing change: the comeback of post-socialist cities

The paper explores major trends and patterns of change embedded in the overall process of economic, social and political transformation that profoundly influence the spatial adaptation and repositioning of post-socialist cities. It reflects on important issues such as the efforts to create competitive, socially inclusive and well-governed cities in the post-socialist world. The research draws much-needed attention to an important set of urban policy issues with wide implications for the success of the transition process in the region. It explores the links between the transition to democracy, markets and decentralized governance, and highlights the most salient characteristics of these multilayered processes on the spatial transformation in post-socialist cities. The main argument is that the impact of these processes of urban change has created a mosaic of diverse urban experiences. Despite this diversity, the spatial transformation has several principal dimensions: (1) new spaces of production/consumption reflecting globalization and economic restructuring within the hierarchy of cities; (2) social differentiation in residential spaces associated with growing inequality and the emergence of new forms of urban poverty; and (3) conflicts and selective urban development associated with new models of governance and institutional transformation. The exploration of these ‘transitions’ through the urban lens emphasizes the importance of strategic urban management to address the unique challenges of post-socialist cities and their dynamic realities.

Global Restructuring, Transmigration and Mexican Rural Women Who Stay Behind: Accommodating, Contesting and Transcending Ideologies

In a time when globalization has escalated the migration of groups of people there is still little known of the families and communities that stay behind. Based on over five years of ethnographic research with campesinas (rural Mexican women) in a highly migratory part of Central Mexico, this article examines the manner in which campesinas who stay behind as their husbands migrate are implicated in global processes. As a result of the movement of spouses to and from the United States new ideas, capital, bodies, and information are introduced that alter the roles and perspectives of women who stay behind. From a gendered glocal framework that links global and local processes and considers power relations stretched across various spaces and amongst gender relations, the author examines how women learn to accommodate, contest, and transcend their transmigrant state and changing ideologies. Women's integration in a non-governmental organization, reliance on family networks and cultural traditions, among others, help maintain their integrity and wholeness as single mothers, group leaders, and community participants.

Extrapolating Transnational Arcs, Excavating Imperial Legacies: The Speculative Acts of Karen Tei Yamashita's Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

I will outnumber you. I will outbillion you. I am the spectacle in the forest. I am the inventor of rubber. I will outrubber you. Sir, the reality of your world is nothing more than a rotten caricature of great opera. --Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo In 1927, Henry Ford bought approximately 2.5 million acres of Amazon rainforest in the northern state of Para, Brazil, where he established a sizeable rubber plantation. (1) strived to be an all-inclusive, neocolonial system, extending the plantation infrastructure beyond sawmills and processing plants to include US-style hospitals, schools, white clapboard houses, and even recreational facilities such as a motion-picture theater and an eighteen-hole golf course. As documented in the company's archives, the Ford rubber plantations in Brazil worked to fulfill a Fordist fantasy of bringing modernity and to the almost impenetrable tropical jungle. (2) In her speculative fiction Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990), Asian American writer Karen Tei Yamashita excavates this largely forgotten scene of US imperialism in Brazil and extrapolates from such imperial legacies what might happen to the Amazon when a valuable, rubbery, and possibly alien resource is unearthed during an age of global restructuring. In Through the Arc, disavowed imperial legacies such as Fordlandia resurface in mutated forms that haunt Yamashita's near-future speculations. By unearthing these buried histories, I place Through the Arc's historical extrapolations in critical dialogue with a long line of science that have worked on behalf of European and US empire-building to render the resource-rich jungle available for imperial conquest and expansion. Through the Arc intervenes in and disrupts imperialist fantasies of an uninhabited and virginal jungle, unruly, in need of outside regulation, and ripe and available for development. While speculative narratives about the tropics have often served projects that capitalize on the alienation and exoticization of indigenous peoples, I suggest that Yamashita offers her own speculations on the Brazilian Amazon to quite different ends. At once a cautionary tale of deforestation, exploitative labor practices, and abusive extraction of natural resources on the part of an avaricious first-world capitalist machine, Through the Arc critiques the historical amnesia that often accompanies progress narratives and what Maria-Josefina Saldana-Portillo has called fictions of development (752). Set in the rainforests of Brazil and featuring a Japanese Brazilian protagonist, Through the Arc recently garnered attention from Asian American scholars looking to complicate the US national formation of Asian American Studies. (3) In her reading of Through the Arc, Rachel Lee highlights how Yamashita's work broadens definitions of Asian to include Asian diasporas to Latin America (Americas 121). Lamenting the book's characterization by reviewers as magical realist, satirical, and futuristic, but never a work of Asian American literature, Lee asserts that Through the Arc is in fact an Asian American text, future-fitted for a post-nationalist conceptualization of Asian (113). In this essay, I emphasize the importance of reading Yamashita's work not only as Asian American literature, but also as science fiction--or, more accurately, as what writer and critic Nalo Hopkinson has termed science fiction. (4) Distinguishing their own work from science fiction's frequent fascination with exploration, conquest, and strange encounters, Hopkinson and Yamashita both take interest in telling stories that take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it (Hopkinson 9). Extrapolated from lived experiences of alienation, abduction, and space and time travel, postcolonial science fiction such as Yamashita's Through the Arc formulates near-futures that call attention to imperial legacies of exclusion, exploitation, and displacement. …

Regional Deindustrialization and Re-bundling: Evidence from the Merger of the Former German Hoechst and French Rhône-Poulenc Groups

large part of the work in economic geography and other social sciences has focused on new growth prospects due to the establishment of global production chains and the rise of new clusters of industrial activity. Much less attention has been paid to former growth industries and regions that have recently experienced shrinking processes due to internationalization. This paper will explore the cases of two chemical regions, i.e. southern Hessen, Germany and Rhône-Alpes, France. These two areas have both undergone drastic restructuring since the mid-1990s, due to the merger of the prominent chemical groups Hoechst and Rhône-Poulenc into Aventis. Instead of investigating the development of the core activities at Aventis, we will focus on the operations that were considered less important and consequently split off. In addition to the negative consequences produced by these activities, in our analysis we also emphasize regional opportunities which arise from competence building, reorientation and new firm formation. These processes can be viewed as re-bundling existing and new knowledge bases with other resources to help overcome economic crises and develop a new competitive edge. As such, the paper aims to contribute to a relational understanding of economic globalization and regional restructuring.

The Southern Model of Broiler Production and Its Global Implications

AbstractThis paper introduces the concept of the Southern Model of broiler production as the preferred organizational form in the global agrifood system. A synthesis of existing works on the broiler industry combined with new information documenting its global diffusion is used to develop the concept of the Southern Model. The analysis of events supports a flexible accumulation over flexible specialization interpretation of the globalization of the Southern Model. The investigation of the historical development and diffusion of the Southern Model warrants special attention from researchers concerned with the socioeconomic implications of the global restructuring of the agrifood system.