New International Division Of Labour Research Articles

Information Technology, Gender Segmentation and the Relocation of Back Office Employment: The Growth of the Teleservices Sector in Ireland

The movement of routine back office activities from the central business districts of metropolitan regions in advanced economies to remote locations is leading to a distinctive global division of labour in office employment. While facilitated by the development of information and communication technologies, this process of relocation is primarily driven by the desire to reduce operating costs, mainly by moving to sources of cheap female workers. This reflects a classic gender segmentation process in patriarchal societies whereby back office work is mainly done by women and, accordingly, involves relatively low levels of remuneration. This provides direct parallels with the offshoring of routine manufacturing work associated with the new international division of labour. Ireland has been to the forefront in acting as a host for internationally-mobile routine office work, initially involving mainly data processing and, more recently, teleservices. As elsewhere, teleservices employment in Ireland is characterized by a combination of female predominance, low pay, difficult working conditions and high turnover rates. However, the Irish teleservices sector is unusual in its foreign language requirement, the high education levels of workers and its concentration in a prosperous metropolitan location. The resultant labour shortages, combined with growing use of Internet-based business-to-consumer transactions, are likely to place the sustainability of the sector under increasing pressure. Plans to upgrade the types of back office functions being located in Ireland may pose further challenges for women workers due to male dominance of the higher-level jobs involved.

Globalisation and the End of Social Democracy

It has been very widely argued that processes of globalisation render traditional forms of social democratic politics impossible. The paper identifies and reviews three key claims in this debate — concerning trade, capital mobility and a new international division of labour. It is argued that, whilst much has changed, this has not always led in the direction anticipated by those who foresee an end to “traditional social democracy”. In particular, the sorts of changes that have taken place do not add up to an endorsement of recent enthusiasm for a “third way”.

Economic Restructuring, Financial Crises, and Women's Work in Mexico

This paper contributes to our understanding of the social impact of economic restructuring and globalization in Mexico by analyzing changes in entry-level employment across three generations of Mexican women. Using retrospective data, we relate the divergent period conditions represented by each cohort to the process of labor market incorporation and other facets of first employment, namely first occupation, class of worker, and firm size. The analysis tests human capital, new international division of labor, and household strategy explanations of the response of female employment to macro-economic fluctuations. Results indicate that rising levels of human capital were central to increases in women's labor force participation across generations and improved labor demand conditions during growth cycles were an important impetus for women's incorporation into professional and more formal types of employment. We also find support for international division of labor perspectives, as women's representation in manufacturing (maquiladora) employment grew substantially over time. Overall, household survival theories best captured the effect of economic restructuring and globalization on women's work. Economic downturns and financial shocks triggered women's labor market incorporation, particularly among married women, lending strong support to the idea that in periods of economic uncertainty women join the labor market in order to diversify household earnings and protect against deteriorating family incomes. However, this labor market push was concentrated in domestic and self-employed occupations and in smaller firms, findings that portend challenges to the long-term prospects of women's work in Mexico.

Inclusive Boundaries and Other (Im)possible Paths toward Community Development in a Global World

This paper is based on a talk given at a University of Pennsylvania symposium on Social Movements and Law Reform. In it Professor Ansley takes as a case study the U.S. movement against plant closings. In the seventies, eighties and nineties this movement attempted to respond to the increasing flow of industrial capital from the U.S. to other countries. Like other social movements, it devoted a significant part of its energy to "framing" its issues - articulating and attempting to promote a particular way of looking at the issue of plant closings, de-industrialization, and the new international division of labor. Drawing in part on her own experiences as a participant/observer in the plant-closing movement, Professor Ansley describes the initial frame developed by plant-closing rhetoricians to situate the movement's issues and justify its demands. That frame valorized the notion of bounded political communities as central to democracy. It called for the creation and defense of polities with jurisdiction strong enough to establish effective boundaries and impose economic ground rules on footloose corporations. Ansley confesses continued affection for this frame. In fact, one section of the article points to recent disputes initiated under Chapter 11 of NAFTA that confirm the profound importance of bounded polities empowered to set ground rules for economic actors and others. However, she goes on to tell how troubling it was to many who had been extolling the importance of strong boundaries when the plant-closing movement was confronted with the upsurge of migration into the United States from the third world. In this new context, rhetoric from the plant-closing movement that had seemed progressive in its original context suddenly showed itself to have a dangerously exclusionary side. Ansley claims that the tension between the need for bounded polities and the need for open borders is a significant paradox. In light of contemporary forms of globalization, bounded communities appear simultaneously to be crucial bulwarks that protect democracy, and racist fortresses that render it impossible. Although she makes no pretense of attempting to resolve this paradox, she urges its importance, especially for lawyers interested in the dynamics of globalization.

Global practice implications Reactions to Duany The West is running out of talent …

Paolo Tombesi sets out a very interesting thesis that Asia will become the ‘back office’ of Western design practice in, ‘A true south for design? The new international division of labour in architecture’ (arq 5/2, pp.171–180). There are many instances of this happening already, though mainly in engineering and in US style architectural practice where documentation consists of the application of rules-based methods and the work used to be done by ‘tracers’. Practices with computer-based standard detailing can have schematic drawings worked up overnight and corrections similarly serviced. UK architectural practice is largely done without back offices or standard solutions and drafting help must be closely supervised. Price competition from the South may well become a factor for change.

The New International Division of Labour in Asian Electronics: Work Organization and Human Resources in Japan and Malaysia

This article documents and analyses the organization of work and human resources management in ten manufacturing plants in Malaysia and three plants in Japan. Each of the plants carries out specific tasks within an emergent international division of labour surrounding two Japanese multinational producers of consumer electronics goods. Plant roles reflect their positions in commodity chains driven by the multinationals, varying in relation to product‐to‐product and component‐to‐component divisions of labour, and in relation to the location of product and process innovations. How work is organized and how workers are managed are explained by the location of each plant within this division of labour, and by the characteristics and situation of labour, the one commodity which talks back, within the local environment.

A true south for design? The new international division of labour in architecture

This analysis shows how the increasing availability of computers in architectural practice and the steady development of electronic networks around the world could encourage the relocation of professional structures into countries with lower production costs. Starting from the existence of sharp professional wage differentials between developed and developing regions, it formulates the hypothesis that, in a few years, most architectural work could be documented in places such as South-East Asia and transferred digitally over to America, Australia or Europe.

Globalization and Self-Government: Impacts and Implications for First Nations in Canada

While Canada has moved beyond its colonial relationship with Great Britain, many argue that Aboriginal peoples in Canada continue to be entrenched in colonialism. In recent years, self-government negotiations have been initiated to redress this paradox. Problematic, however, is the fact that these negotiations are taking place in a socioeconomic environment that is being transformed by globalization. In this era of globalization, in which corporations assume a more dominant role in all spheres of life, the Canadian government is involved in a process of significant restructuring driven by a neoliberal agenda. In accordance with this vision of a minimalist state and unfettered market-driven development, self-government is being promoted as a means for political autonomy as well as for economic development in Aboriginal communities--all considered critical elements of decolonization. Through the process of devolution, the state is, arguably, promoting self-governance as a means to enhance the opportunity of A boriginal peoples to enter the market society and liberate them from traditional colonial constraints. But what are the implications for self-government arrangements constructed within this framework? This paper argues that self-government negotiated within the parameters of globalization, under the auspices of corporate dominance, does not represent decolonization but neocolonialism. Focussing on the condition of resource-rich Aboriginal communities within Canada, this paper considers why some First Nations appear to embrace self-government as a means of political autonomy and the partnering of their communities with corporations as a form of economic independence. It concludes by considering some potential consequences of globalization for First Nations. These conclusions envision the possibility of increased social pathologies for Aboriginal peoples if social-service needs are not met; the division of communities internally as they struggle to survive in a capitalist while maintaining their traditi onal values; conflict between First Nations and other Canadians as they struggle to gain access to resources; and the intensification of Aboriginal nationalism generally. This paper is not a critique of self-government, per se, but rather of the way it is being conceptualized and constructed, since it locks Aboriginal peoples in an unequal relationship as they pass from government paternalism to corporate dependency. As government yields to corporate pressures, it similarly subsumes the welfare of Aboriginal peoples to the demands of the market. Thus self-government today further subjects First Nations to corporate rule and solidifies their assimilation. Globalization Defined Critical to understanding the self-government process is the context in which it is occurring. In essence, self-government today is being implemented under the auspices of globalization. Globalization has become a common term in corporate and political circles with a variety of meanings ranging from descriptions of contemporary economic to political or even social phenomena and, for some, it is a dangerous euphemism for the current restructuring of international capitalism (Klak 1998,3). It moves on a parallel track with other such euphemisms: the information society, late capitalism, postmodernity, the end of history, the end of state sovereignty, and the end of democracy. My understanding of the term draws on Robert Cox's observation that the characteristics of the globalization trend include the internationalizing of production, the new international division of labor, new migratory movements from South to North, the new competitive environment that accelerates these processes, and the internationalizing of the state... making states into agencies of the globalizing world (Scholte 1997,21). Hence, the term implies economic change accompanied by political change. While most of the rhetoric associated with globalization privileges its economic component, I agree with Joachim Hirsch that globalization should not be exclusively seen as an adherence to an economic 'logic' or some sort of natural tendency of a market economy. …

Telecommunications and Transnationalism: The Polarization of Social Space

This article critically assesses the policy orientation, social impacts, and linkages of telecommunications in the United States within a government deregulated policy environment and an increasingly globalized economy. Deregulation has been driven by both ideological and technological demands, stemming from several political and economic transformations in the world economy, the collapse of state socialism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and greater oligopolistic competition among transnational corporations. An expanded infrastructure of new digital information and communications technology (ICT) is the foundation of a worldwide political economic regime of accumulation. ICT increases command and control capabilities of large corporations, together with the mobility and liquidity of capital, making it essential to the restructuring of the world economy, the new international division of labor, and the creation of global "information city" networks. At the same time, government deregulation and rapid technological change are associated with a number of spatial, economic, and social dualisms.

The Language of Globalization

The language of globalization deserves some explicit attention. To begin with, the word globalization itself is a nonconcept in most uses: a simple catalogue of everything that seems different since, say, 1970, whether advances in information technology, widespread use of air freight, speculation in currencies, increased capital flows across borders, Disneyfication of culture, mass marketing, global warming, genetic engineering, multinational corporate power, new international division of labor, international mobility of labor, reduced power of nation-states, postmodernism, or post-Fordism. The issue is more than one of careless use of words: intellectually, such muddy use of the term fogs any effort to separate cause from effect, to analyze what is being done, by whom, to whom, for what, and with what effect. Politically, leaving the term vague and ghostly permits its conversion to something with a life of its own, making it a force, fetishizing it as something that has an existence independent of the will of human beings, inevitable and irresistible. This lack of clarity in usage afflicts other elements of the discussion of globalization as well, with both analytic and political consequences. Let me outline some problem areas, and suggest some important differentiations.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Labour and Globalisation: Results and Prospects

Andrew Herod (ed.), Organizing the Landscape. Geographical Perspectives of Labor Unionism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, £15.95, xix+372 pp.Eric Lee, The Labour Movement and the Internet. The New Labour Internationalism, London: Pluto Press, 1997, £14.99, xi+212 pp.Gregory Mantsios (ed.), A New Labour Movement for the New Century, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998, $24.00, xix+353 pp.Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World. Unions in the International Economy, London: Verso, 1997, £14.00, 342 pp.Peter Waterman, Globalization, Social Movements and the New Internationalisms, London: Mansell, 1998, £55.00, 302 pp.Torn by internationalization of finance and production, unable to adapt to networking of firms and individualization of work, and challenged by the degendering of employment, the labor movement fades away as a major source of social cohesion and workers' representation (Castells 1997: 354).The new unionismMore or less all the books under review refer to a ‘new labour internationalism’ as a significant break from the dominant post-war trend of nation-statist unionism. Thus for Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World, ‘If capitalism is now more global than ever, so too is the working class it begets’ (308). The transnational nature of contemporary capitalism is seen to point towards new international trade-union strategies but also the old notion of an international working class. In a similar vein, Edna Bonaich argues that ‘Rapidly globalizing capital obviously calls forth the need for a global labor movement’ (Journal of World Systems Research 1998: 3). In all of this we see a certain degree of inexorability with capitalism ‘begetting’ social classes, and an ‘obvious’ development of a global labour movement. We should probably recall an earlier debate in the late 1970s around the ‘new international division of labour’ and the call for workers' organisations to mirror the growing transnational corporations (TNCs). Then as now we cannot base our assumptions on any inevitabilisms. Having said that, this time around there does seem to be considerable pressure and more favourable disposition towards the creation of transnational labour strategies.

The Process of Globalisation and Class Transformation in the West

In this article the contemporary international capitalist system is examined and a rising New International Division of Labour is defined. It is argued that while in previous epochs an international market of commodities existed, during the post-war period a global network of closely interconnected production units and financial institutions has been created as well. But while production, finance and commerce are decentralised worldwide, their management and control is centralised in a few headquarters in the advanced capitalist countries. A colossal concentration of economic power and control over the world means of production, resources and labour force, unprecedented in the history of capitalism, is taking place. Information Technology is shown to be the current day means of centralisation of organisation and control of both material and service production by capital. It, at the same time, allocates work and degrades its knowledge content. Coupled with the prevalence of services in western society, it ...

The Codes of Migration

This paper presents a case study of the software industry in India and the US as a step toward an ethnography of transnational migration. By focusing on the subject positions and forms of work created by the new international division of labor, contemporary theories of global culture and difference are brought into question through a political economy of globalization. The analysis suggests that the phenomena of postnational deterritorialization may be less important than the emerging forms of labor polarization within and across nation-states.

New International Division of Labour, New Occupational Health Hazards: Community responses to the electronic industry in Thailand

Sally Theobold critically analyses literature and qualitative research findings about gender, electronic work and occupational health. She draws on workers' voices and perceptions about the prevalence and range of occupational health hazards occurring in the electronic industries of northern Thailand. Theobald explores whether the responses of civil society to these hazards are replicable.

Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies

Since the early 1970s, debates have raged throughout the social sciences concerning the process of ‘‘globalization’’ ^ an essentially contested term whose meaning is as much a source of controversy today as it was over two decades ago, when systematic research ¢rst began on the topic. Contemporary globalization research encompasses an immensely broad range of themes, from the new international division of labor, changing forms of industrial organization, and processes of urbanregional restructuring to transformations in the nature of state power, civil society, citizenship, democracy, public spheres, nationalism, politico-cultural identities, localities, and architectural forms, among many others. 2 Yet despite this proliferation of globalization research, little theoretical consensus has been established in the social sciences concerning the interpretation of even the most rudimentary elements of the globalization process ^ e.g., its historical periodization, its causal determinants, and its socio-political implications. 3 Nevertheless, within this whirlwind of opposing perspectives, a remarkably broad range of studies of globalization have devoted detailed attention to the problematic of space, its social production, and its historical transformation. Major strands of contemporary globalization research have been permeated by geographical concepts ^ e.g., ‘‘space-time compression,’’ ‘‘space of £ows,’’ ‘‘space of places,’’ ‘‘deterritorialization,’’ ‘‘glocalization,’’ the ‘‘global-local nexus,’’ ‘‘supra

A Mechanism of Urban Formation in Developing Asia: A Case of the Pearl River Delta Region, China

This paper aims at considering a mechanism of urban formation in Asia, focusing on the growth of small towns under the economic reform since the 1980s in the Pearl River Delta region, southern China. A discussion on the extended pattern of urbanization in Asia and some models of China's economic development are reviewed as a frame of reference. The extended urban formation in the Pearl River Delta region is considered to be the incorporating process of the region into the New International Division of Labour. Some Hong Kong-based enterprises have started to locate large-scale factories to the region, while they have left headquarters functions in Hong Kong. Those factories have employed a lot of workers from a segmented regional labour market of immigrants. Local communities in rural areas have accumulated land profits from the compensation of land expropriation and rent of collective-owned land to promote land development in their domains. While foreign enterprises aggressively invest in the region in pursuit of preferable location for their production, local communities in rural area as well as local government competitively develop their land and construct facilities on it in order to invite more foreign investment. As a result, these movements have brought about rapid changes in the landscape of the region.

»Vernetzte Produktion« und »post-fordistische« Reproduktion

The article reviews recent debates on production networks in political economy and labor sociology. The argument draws upon the findings of an extended empirical study of production strategies, supplier networks, and labor relations in the computer industry of California's »Silicon Valley«. The paper emphasizes the centrality of manufacturing work in today's information technology industry and discusses the implications of the recent restructuring of industry organization and work in this sector for critical approaches as developed in U.S. industrial geography, theories of the »new international division of labor«, European and German industrial sociology, and race and gender studies. A theoretical framework for an integrated analysis of the political economy of »post-fordist« production networks is developed from the context of French regulation theory.

The New Urban Paradigm: Critical Perspectives on the City

Chapter 1 The New Urban Paradigm: Urban Social Science for the Twenty-First Century Part 2 I. Cities in Global Perspective Chapter 3 Cities and the New International Division of Labor: An Overview Chapter 4 The Global Context of Metropolitan Growth: Houston and the Oil Industry Chapter 5 Extractive Regions in Developed Countries: A Comparative Analysis of the Oil Capitals/ Houston and Aberdeen Part 6 II. Powerful Economic Actors in City Development Chapter 7 Cities in Conflict Chapter 8 Urban Real Estate Speculation: Implications for Social Science and Urban Planning Chapter 9 Irrationality in Real Estate Investment: The Case of Houston Part 10 III. The Political Dimension of City Development Chapter 11 The Corporate Center Strategy: The State in Central Cities Chapter 12 Arenas of Conflict: Zoning and Land-Use Reform in Critical Political-Economic Perspective Chapter 13 Are Planners Collective Capitalists? The Cases of Aberdeen and Houston Part 14 IV. Race, Racism, and City Development Chapter 15 Slavery Unwilling to Die: The Background of Black Oppression in the 1980s Chapter 16 The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places Chapter 17 The Continuing Significance of Racism: Discrimination Against Black Students in White Colleges Chapter 18 Changing Black Americans to Fit a Racist System? Part 19 V. Review and Reprise Chapter 20 Urban Sociology: Feagin Style Chapter 21 The New Urban Paradigm: Feagin's Contributions

Globalization and international division of labour: two concepts–one debate?

In this article three main approaches to the concept of globalization are distinguished between, and it is demonstrated that arguments in the ‘new’ debate on globalization and the sss‘old’ debate on a new international division of labour are in many respects similar.

Industrial Restructuring and the Development of Office Spaces in Singapore

An important shift has occurred since the 1970s and this is a move from an international to a global economy. In this transition, capital has to make effective use of geographical and institutional differences in the world. This process is reshaping the inter-national system into global networks controlled from a handful of global cities in the core countries. However, studies on global (world) cities in the context of the new inter-national division of labor and industrial location have been concerned about the hierarchical position of cities in a static sense. That is the differences are viewed under fixed conditions, concentrating on global cities in core areas, and not the semi-periphery.Because of the emergence of new regions which have comparative advantages of periphery over the semi-periphery, these seems to be an acceleration of inter-urban competition and alliance across borders. For survival in a global economy, cities which are located the semi-periphery have to make up for geographical and institutional differences with self-regulation, ensaring that global capital can be made to work more effectively through the inter-national division of labor and financial systems.This paper, attempts to grasp how a semi-peripheral global city secures its position in global economic interactions by acquiring the particular economic activities which can disperse from the core or innovating it, the author attempted to consider the industrial restructuring and the office development in Singapore, directing particular attention to the role of the state. The following summarizes the main results:There appeared to be growth of office workers within all industrial sectors, but especially the FIRE and business services, and a concurrent decline of production workers in the manufacturing sector since the 1980s. The reason for these trends may be explained by both external and internal factors.The external factors are the globalization of production and finance systems. The establishment of regional headquarters in Asia can be accounted for the necessity of obtaining‘the foothold space’in the emerging market: a result of United States, European, Japanese, and NIEs trans-national corporations, especially in the electronic industry, expansion of off-shore production, as well as the globalization of the financial system brought about by advanced telecommunication and information technology and ever increasing international money flows.The internal factors are the economic strategies that have been implemented by the Economic Development Board (EDB), a statutory board to assist survival of the city-state in a global economy. As the EDB encouraged the removal of the labor intensive manufacturing sector from Singapore and its relocation to neighboring regions since the 1980s, the above external conditions served Singapore by offering a favorable business environment for office activities. The articulation of the external and internal factors regulated by the state led to growth in the number of office workers.In Singapore, much office space was constructed in the CBD. At the beginning, comparatively small office buildings were developed in the Cecil district which is adjacent the traditional hard-core of the CBD. Following this construction, large and smart buildings which incorporate advanced information and telecommunication technology were built in the hard-core. As for the use of this office space, there is now a spatial agglomeration of the financial industry in the hard-core concurrent with the globalization of finance. That is to say the developmental process of office space in Singapore, advanced toward the hard-core from the adjacent district and facilitated the shaping traditional financial industrial district into the global one. This process is in the opposite direction of global cities built historically in the core.