Production Globalization and the Segmentation of the Global Manufacturing Sector*

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-295
Author(s):  
Matthew Mahutga
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Global South ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Average Level ◽  
Labor Power ◽  
Positional Power ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Impact

I review three key claims regarding the impact of production globalization on manufacturing workers worldwide, and subject them to empirical scrutiny. Some argue that production globalization causes a “race to the bottom” that leads to a downward convergence of manufacturing workers’ labor power worldwide. Others suggest instead that production globalization leads to an upward convergence of labor power among manufacturing workers worldwide. A third perspective is agnostic with respect to the average level of this labor power, but predicts divergence between the global North and global South. Using a novel empirical approach to cross-national and temporally comparable measurement of manufacturing labor market power, I show that both the (country-average) level and (between-country) dispersion of labor market power have increased worldwide since the mid-1960s. To explain these trends, I juxtapose insights from Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory with those from the interdisciplinary literature on global value chains and production networks. Both predict that globalization should increase labor market power more in the global North than in the global South. However, the former focuses on labor demand shocks from international trade, while the latter focuses on relationships between firms in the North and South in light of the strategic behavior of network/chain leaders. Augmenting the empirical approach to the measurement of the aggregate positional power of national manufacturing firms developed elsewhere, I show that both international trade and positional power matter for the distribution of manufacturing labor-market power worldwide, but the latter effects are stronger. I conclude by positioning these results within larger debates about the fate of labor in a globalized manufacturing economy.

scholarly journals Learning with mobiles: The Global South

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Traxler
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Global South ◽  
Global North ◽  
Education And Technology ◽  
Practical Progress ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Research And Policy

This article addresses the need to build sustainable, appropriate and authentic foundations for learning with mobiles in the Global South. It does this in two ways: first, by reviewing aspects of the current environment, namely the nature of learning with mobiles in the Global North, the relationships between research and policy in relation to learning with mobiles, the impact of mobile technology on language, and the meanings of international development; and second, by consolidating these within a broader and critical historical framework that sees education and technology as the instruments of the hegemony of the Global North, reinforcing its values and worldview. This is, however, methodologically challenging and problematic, and the article briefly considers how such arguments should be constructed. The article concludes by offering ways forward as the basis for practical progress.

scholarly journals Ecologically Unequal Exchange of Plastic Waste?

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-287
Author(s):  
Yikang Bai ◽  
Jennifer Givens
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Global South ◽  
High Income ◽  
Plastic Waste ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
Exchange Relationships ◽  
Unequal Exchange ◽  
Global North ◽  
Waste Trade

Plastic production has been increasing since mass production of plastics started in the 1950s. As plastic production has continued to rise, so has plastic waste. Meanwhile, international trade in plastic waste has increased as well. The narrative about global trade in plastic waste oftentimes is that the Global North transfers waste to the Global South. However, little is known quantitatively about the extent to which the Global North shifts environmental harms of plastic waste to the Global South. We examine the extent to which global trade in plastic waste provides evidence for ecologically unequal exchange relationships from 2003 to 2013. We then explore whether plastic waste can be a resource for some countries. Specifically, we investigate how trade in plastic waste is associated with level of economic development in high-income countries and non-high-income countries. The findings provide nuanced evidence of ecologically unequal exchange relationships between high-income countries and non-high-income countries in plastic waste trade. The results also indicate that higher plastic waste import is associated with greater economic development in non-high-income countries. This research advances our understanding of the theory of ecologically unequal exchange in the context of international trade in plastic waste.

Italian youth mobility: The case for a Mediterranean model of ‘family-centred’ mobile transitions

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110370
Author(s):  
Giulia Marchetti ◽  
Loretta Baldassar ◽  
Anita Harris ◽  
Shanthi Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Model ◽  
Global South ◽  
Transitions To Adulthood ◽  
Transnational Mobility ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Critical Literature ◽  
Transition Studies

This article seeks to advance our understanding of contemporary transnational youth mobility, drawing on the concept ‘mobile transitions’ to explore scholarly approaches to the mobility practices of young Italians moving abroad. We present a critical literature review of the intersections of migration, youth and transition studies to argue that the literature on youth transnational mobility currently features two contrasting models comprising a ‘transitions-focused’ Global South model and an ‘experiential-focused’ Global North model. This bifurcation fails to account for emergent regional models of mobility that may help to sharpen scholarly understandings of a new generation of youth ‘on the move’. We propose an alternative model positioned somewhere along the spectrum between the Global North and Global South models, which we define as the Mediterranean model of ‘family-centred’ transnational youth mobility. This model reflects aspects of both privileged, experiential youth migrations, which tend to undervalue the impact on transitions to adulthood, and economically driven youth migrations, which tend to focus more directly on the economic dimensions of youth to adulthood transitions. The Mediterranean model highlights more broadly how mobility enables and shapes transitions, which are simultaneously driven by both economic imperatives and individual experiential desires, and mediated through family and culture.

scholarly journals TAMING PLATFORM CAPITALISM: STRUGGLES FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH MEET STRUGGLES FROM THE GLOBAL NORTH

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Arriagada ◽  
Mark Graham ◽  
Ursula Huws ◽  
Janaki Srinivasan ◽  
Macarena Bonhomme ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Global South ◽  
Job Quality ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
Global North ◽  
Global Platform ◽  
The Impact ◽  
North And South ◽  
Platform Economy

This panel brings together scholars whose work seeks to tame platform capitalism understanding how the lives of platform workers are affected by digital platforms. Research on platform labor has been mostly done in the global north, as well as in relation to global platforms like Uber or Amazon (Rosenblat 2019; Scholz 2016). Thus, the panelists, moreover, explore how the lives of platform workers can be improved within the global platform economy by analyzing workers’ subjectivities in relation to platforms and the impact of technologies in job quality. To achieve this, this panel brings together scholars from global north and south countries that will map the complexities and subjectivities of platform workers in order to tame platform capitalism. We present a set of articles that address: (1) regulatory resistance that clarifies and redefines the rules that platforms need to abide by; (2) bottom-up resistance of platform workers who seek to organize, subvert, and build alternatives; (3) the ways that action research can support either of those initiatives to ultimately tame some of the worst excesses of platform capitalism.

Locating Poor Whites in Contemporary Travel Narratives

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Sarah Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
New South ◽  
Rural Poverty ◽  
Global South ◽  
Us South ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Impact

This chapter charts the long history of travel writing about the US South and explores the continued fascination and simultaneous repulsion with its poor whites. It discusses neo-colonial approaches to the region and poverty in the work of writers including Pamela Petro, V.S. Naipaul, and Paul Theroux, and the cosmopolitan perspectives advanced by writers such as Bill Bryson and Eddy L. Harris. It compares representations of Atlanta as the embodiment of the New South with romanticized accounts of rural poverty and proposes that the realities of contemporary poverty either go unrecognized or are aligned with the economics of the Global South rather than with US economics that shape the Global North. It critically examines stereotyping, appeals to authenticity and questions the impact of tourism on the region.

scholarly journals Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 839-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niko Besnier ◽  
Daniel Guinness ◽  
Mark Hann ◽  
Uroš Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Global South ◽  
Professional Athletes ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
The World ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
Global North ◽  
Rugby Players

AbstractIn the Global South since the 1980s, when economic downturns under pressure from the forces of neoliberalism eroded social relations, sport and athletes’ bodies have become major loci where masculinity is constituted and debated. Sport masculinity now fills a vacuum left by the evacuation of traditional forms of masculinity, which are no longer available to the new generations of men. For them, the possibility of employment in the sport industries in the Global North has had a transformative effect, despite the extremely limited probability of success. During the same period of time, the world of sport has become commoditized, mediatized, and corporatized, transformations that have been spearheaded by the growing importance of privatized media interests. Professional athletes have become neoliberal subjects responsible for their own destiny in an increasingly demanding and unpredictable labor market. In Cameroon, Fiji, and Senegal, athletic hopefuls prospectively embody this new gendered subjectivity by mobilizing locally available instruments that most closely resemble neoliberal subjectivity, such as Pentecostalism and maraboutism. Through the conduit of sport, the masculine self has been transformed into a neoliberal subject in locations where this is least expected. What emerges is a new approach to masculinity that eschews explanations based on the simple recognition of diverse and hierarchically organized masculinities, and instead recognizes masculinity in its different manifestations as embedded, scalar, relational, and temporally situated.

scholarly journals Determinants of China’s structural change during the reform era

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-119
Author(s):  
Kaiming Guo ◽  
Jing Hang ◽  
Se Yan
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Switching Costs ◽  
Factor Intensity ◽  
Intensity Effect ◽  
Decomposition Approach ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Income Elasticity Of Demand

Purpose Economic theories on structural change focus on factors such as fluctuations in relative prices and income growth. In addition, China’s reform and opening up has also been accompanied by increasing openness, significant fluctuations in investment rates, and frictions in the labor market. Existing literature lacks a unified theoretical framework to assess the relative importance of all these determinants. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach To incorporate all of the potential determinants of China’s structural change, the authors build a two-country four-sector neoclassical growth model that embeds the multi-sector Eaton and Kortum (2002) model of international trade, complete input-output structure, non-homothetic preference and labor market frictions. The authors decompose the sectoral employment shares into six effects: the Baumol, Engel, investment, international trade, factor intensity and labor market friction effects. Using the data of Chinese economy from 1978 to 2011, the authors perform a quantitative investigation of the six determinants’ effects through the decomposition approach and counterfactual exercises. Findings Low-income elasticity of demand, high labor intensity, and the existence of the switching costs are the reasons for the high employment share in the agricultural sector. Technological progress, investment and international trade have comparatively less influence on the proportion difference of employment in the three sectors. Originality/value Therefore, to examine the impact on China’s structural change, in addition to Baumol effect and the Engel effect, it is also necessary to consider the impact of three more factors: international trade, investment and switching costs. Therefore, the authors decompose the factors that may influence China’s structural change into the Baumol, Engel, investment, international trade, factor intensity effect and switching cost effects. The authors evaluate these six effects using the decomposition approach and counterfactual exercises.

scholarly journals ‘There was no freedom to leave’: Global South international students in Portugal during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110254
Author(s):  
Daniel Malet Calvo ◽  
David Cairns ◽  
Thais França ◽  
Leonardo Francisco de Azevedo
Keyword(s):  
International Students ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Global South ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Global North ◽  
Brazilian Students ◽  
Digital Gap ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Impact

This article looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students, focusing on Portuguese-speaking African and Brazilian students during the lockdown of spring 2020. Using evidence from interviews conducted with 27 students domiciled in Portugal, we illustrate some of the challenges faced by students when coping with the pandemic, including difficulties in meeting the cost of tertiary education and the centrality of working to sustain their stays abroad, alongside the emotional impact of prolonged domestic confinement and separation from families. We also consider the paradoxes of online teaching, which have made visible the digital gap between local and international Global South students in the context of their stays. In this sense, pre-existing inequalities are more at the centre of students’ concerns than new issues raised by COVID-19, a pandemic that served to reveal former injustice in the context of global capitalism. In our conclusion, we argue that there is a need for greater recognition of the vulnerabilities facing certain African and Brazilian students at Global North universities in the context of contemporary neo-liberalism, including their dependence upon precarious work. Policy responses include the need for a more serious involvement and responsibility by both home and host higher education institutions in the lives of their students abroad.

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