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1. The Globalization Project in
Practice
Chapter 6
PhD Fatoş Altınbaş Sarıgül
© Sage Publications, 2011.

2. The Globalization Project
□ The globalization project is about
market integration, legitimacy
management and resistance.
□ Key challenges of the new century
□Persistent poverty
□Pandemic disease
□Environmental damage
□Gender inequality
□Southern debt
© Sage Publications, 2011.

3. The Globalization Project
□ Two faces of globalization:
□ Unprecedented prosperity for minority of
consumers and investors
□ Poverty, displacement, job and food insecurity,
health crisis, informal activity
□ Some key Practices of globalization:
□ Poverty Governance
□ Outsourcing
□ Displacement
□ Informalization
□ Recolonization
© Sage Publications, 2011.

4. Poverty Governance
□ 1988: After recognizing increased vulnerability of poor
caused by Structural adjustment policies (SAPs),
international financial institutions (IFIs) create:
□ Social Emergency Fund (World Bank)
□ Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility
(IMF)
□ 1990s: IFIs create “humanizing” global policies with
their goal to stave off a legitimacy crisis
□ 1996: Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)
Initiative
□ Legitimacy is crucial since WTO and IMF depend on
loan repayment by borrowing from countries to
bankroll their operations.
4
© Sage Publications, 2011.

5. Poverty Governance and
NGOs
□ Securing legitimacy involved ‘democratizing’ SAPs,
encouraging countries and NGOs to take o ‘ownership’
of policy formation and implementation.
□ Privatization of states is also shaped by Transnational
Policy Networks (TPNs)
□ Created by the Bank to serve as:
□ Professional training program centers
□ Sites for preparation of Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers (PRSPs)
□ Privatization no longer means simply selling off public
assets, but integrating states into TPNs as global
market intermediaries
© Sage Publications, 2011.

6. Outsourcing
□ Relocation of goods and services production as a cost-
reduction strategy and a means to increase operational
flexibility for an organization
□ Includes offshoring, as firms shift production overseas.
□ Has become significant for two reasons:
□ Hypermobility of capital in an era of deregulation
and expanding access to cheap/flexible labor
□ Privatization of states
□ Governments also outsource services and
“governance” to NGOs
□ Depends on deepening information and communication
technologies and “compression of space by time”
© Sage Publications, 2011.

7. Three characteristic effects of
neoliberal policy
1. Access to health care for the poor shrinks while
investment grow
2. Outsourcing and cut backs in public sector
budgets reduce preventative programs, allowing
banished diseases such as cholera, dengue fever,
and typhus to reemerge as epidemics.
3. After profiting through the privatization of public
health care systems, managed care organizations
and health insurance companies move on when
profit margins fall.
© Sage Publications, 2011.

8. Global Division of Labor
□ 1990s: Service jobs began migrating to South
□ 1996-2000 U.S. corporate outsourcing grew from $100
billion to $345 billion
□ Concentrate in call centers, graphic design,
computer programming, and accountancy
□ India now outsources outsourcing in order to capture
an expanding back office industry as:
□ Friedman: “democratization of technology,” and the
“flat world,” implying that technology creates a level
playing field for the South
© Sage Publications, 2011.

9. Service Outsourcing in India
□ Comparative advantage of English
□ 1991: After liberalization, jobs outsourced to IT, financial
services, business processes, pharmaceuticals, and auto
components
□ IT sector generates less than 2 percent of national
income
□ Employs 1 million in an economy where 8 million join
the labor force annually
□ But, 230 million reside in publicly neglected and
deteriorating rural habitats
□ Generates clusters of prosperity networked across
national borders than within them
© Sage Publications, 2011.

10. Displacement
□ Caused by structural unemployment
□ Casualization, automation, outsourcing
□ 1973 to 2000: unemployment in global North rose from
10 to almost 50 million
□ 2000: One billion workers un- or under-employed (1/3
of world labor force, mainly in South)
□ Displacement across the world due to:
□ SAP-mandated dismantling of ISI sectors
□ Forced resettlement by infrastructure projects
□ Civil wars
□ Destabilization of rural communities by market forces
(dumping cheap food, land concentration,
corporatization of agriculture, decline of farm
subsidies) © Sage Publications, 2011.

11. Depeasantization
□ Agribusiness and global retailing displace peasants into
slums
□ Yet agriculture is main source of food and income for the
majority of the world’s poor
□ Women produce 60-80% of food grown in most
developing countries
□ Neoliberal idea of food security privileges imports over
local farming
□ But globalizing food forces people to move too
□ WTO Agreement on Agriculture lowered world prices
for agricultural commodities, favored traders and food
processors, hurt farmers
© Sage Publications, 2011.

12. Immigration
□ Global economy stratifies populations across national borders,
not just within them
□ Rich nomads (“consumer-citizens of privileged regions”)
□ Poor nomads (“boat people on planetary scale”)
□ Fear of migrants provokes racist violence, fear of terrorism,
spread of gated communities, rollback of civil rights
□ Feminization and export of care workers from South to North
□ In the interest of those needing cheap labor for servants
□ Terminology used: Displacement of love, global heart transplant,
care drain, chains of love, global nannies
□ Economic refugees – 175 million live as expatriate laborers
around the world
□ Environmental refugees – 1 billion people could be displaced by
climate change by 2050
© Sage Publications, 2011.

13. Labor: The New Export
□ Mobility rights for capital guaranteed by neoliberalism
do not extend to labor,
□ Migration is not new to this century
□ But global migration is feminized: 75% of displaced
people are women and children
□ 1980s debt regime restructurings provoked internal
migration of 300-400 million people in former Third World
□ 100 million people depend on remittances
□ Remittances supplement or subsidize public ventures,
e.g. Turkey
□ Labor exports as a significant way to earn foreign
currency
© Sage Publications, 2011.

14. International Labor Circulation
□ Migrant workers lack human rights
□ International labor organizations have been
ineffectual
□ When labor migrates into the United States:
□ Maintain cultural and linguistic traditions
□ Multicultural effect: immigrants exploiting other
immigrants
□ Amplification of “Ethnicism,” “nativism”
□ U.S. political discourse blame individuals; ignore
structured policies
□ Scapegoat cultural minorities
© Sage Publications, 2011.

15. Informalization
□ New individual and collective livelihood strategies
□ Corporate restructuring causes casualization, making
labor weak, and disorganized
□ Percent of non-agricultural informalization varies
□ It is a politico-cultural process.
□ With the rise of market societies, the boundaries of the
formal economy were identified and regulated by the
state for tax purposes, but they have always been
incomplete and fluid.
□ Agricultural informalization
□ Women: 50-90% of workers in export agriculture jobs
□ Weak labor rights for agricultural labor
□ Rights also violated in child labor
© Sage Publications, 2011.

16. Informalization
□ As a process has two related aspects:
□ The casualization of labor via corporate
restructuring
□ new forms of individual and collective livelihood
strategies
□ The distinctive feature of corporate globalization
is the active informalization of labor cascading
across the world, as it is flexible, cheap and
depresses wages everywhere.
Shadow Economy
© Sage Publications, 2011.

17. Global Recolonization
□ In Africa: foreign investment, used as
wealth extraction, artificial tribal
hierarchies, continued poverty.
□ The resource rate is being played out
via a recolonization process.
© Sage Publications, 2011.

18. Summary
□ Consequences of the globalization project:
□ Poverty Governance
□ Outsourcing
□ Displacement
□ Informalization
□ Recolonization
□ 5 linked dimensions of global restructuring affect all
countries, but with local variation
□ Poverty governance shifts responsibility to poor
□ Outsourcing, downsizing and stagnation due to
SAPs expands the informal sector
□ Casualized wage labor and flexibility strategies
contribute to displacement and informalization
□ Informalization in Africa is a by-product of neglect,
exclusion and resource dispossession
© Sage Publications, 2011.