Labor and Globalisation

Kapitalizmin küresel düzeyde yayılmaya eğilimli bir sistem oluşu öteden beri çalışma ilişkilerinin de küresel boyutu olması gerektiği yönünde bir düşünceyi ortaya çıkartmış ve bu temel düşünce ekseninde çeşitli arayışlar olagelmiştir. Ancak yaygın olarak küreselleşme olarak adlandırılan kapitalizmin son evresinde çokuluslu şirketlerin artan etkisi ve belirleyiciliği konuyu daha da önemli hale getirmiştir. Bu şirketler karşısında haklarını savunmak için emek örgütlerinin küresel düzeyde geliştirdiği en son araç olarak Küresel Çerçeve Sözleşmeler (KÇS) dikkat çekici bir gelişme göstermektedir. Uluslararası işkolu federasyonu veya küresel sendika adı verilen uluslararası emek örgütleri ile işletme konseyleri ve yerel sendikaların, çokuluslu şirketlerle imzaladıkları; temelde şirkette çalışan haklarının tanınması ve işçi-işveren ilişkilerinin düzenlenmesi konularını içeren sözleşmeler yaygın olarak Küresel Çerçeve Sözleşme başlığı altında değerlendirilir. KÇS'lerin ortaya çıkışı kuşkusuz kapitalizmin motor gücü durumundaki dev şirketlerin etkinliğinin küresel düzeyde kazandığı yaygınlık ve derinlikle ilişkilidir. Özellikle 1990'lı yıllarda mal ve hizmetlerin üretimi, dağıtımı ve yönetiminin uluslararasılaşması yönündeki eğilim ivme kazanmıştır. Bu sürecin birbiriyle ilişkili üç yönü bulunmaktadır. Doğrudan yabancı yatırımların artması, çokuluslu şirketlerin küresel ekonomide oynadıkları rolün belirleyici hale gelmesi ve uluslararası üretim ağlarının oluşması. Çokuluslu Şirketler (ÇUŞ) ve onlara bağlı üretim ağları üretimin uluslararasılaşmasının vektörüdür (Castells, 2005:149). Çokuluslu şirketler toplam dünya ticaretinde üçte ikilik bir paya sahiptirler ve uluslararasılaşmış üretimin de çekirdeğini oluştururlar. Bu anlamda küreselleşme sürecinin temel bir boyutu çokuluslu şirketler ve onların etkinliğidir.

El trabajo se en la inserción
laboral de los migrantes latinoamericanos en EE. UU. Plantea
que “debe analizarse en el contexto general del modelo neoliberal —
adoptado desde mediados de la década de 1970—, del proceso de reestructuración
productiva consiguiente y el impacto de la crisis econó-
mica de 2008”. Apunta al hecho que “la reestructuración productiva
gestada durante las tres últimas décadas conllevó un intenso proceso de
desindustrialización y terciarización. Además a la flexibilización del mercado
de trabajo, que afecta principalmente a la fuerza de trabajo inmigrante,
legal e indocumentada, demográfica y socialmente más vulnerable.
Sostiene que “la crisis económica de EE. UU. modificó el escenario
para muchos potenciales migrantes con expectativas de migrar a ese país
en búsqueda de empleo y mejores condiciones de vida. En particular, la
pérdida de participación del empleo en el sector industrial, el incremento
del desempleo y el trabajo informal y precario impactaron mucho más
en la estructura de inserción laboral de los inmigrantes y, entre ellos, fue
aún mayor entre los inmigrantes latinos. Castillo concluye que “en el futuro
cercano es presumible que la demanda de trabajadores migrantes tienda
a orientarse hacia la ‘captura de cerebros’ procedentes de diversos paí-
ses subdesarrollados y al reclutamiento selectivo de trabajadores dirigidos
a ciertos sectores en los que la tasa de ganancia depende del trabajo intensivo
y el reclutamiento de mano de obra con bajos salarios”.

This article reviews conventional theories about various aspects of labor migration: Its origins, stability over time, and patterns of migrant settlement. For each of these aspects, we provide alternative explanatory hypotheses derived from the notions of increasing articulation of the international system and the social embeddedness of its various subprocesses, including labor flows. A typology of sources and outcomes of contemporary immigration is presented as an heuristic device to organize the diversity of such movements as described in the empirical literature.

This article presents a novel analytical framework to study transnational activism in the context of today's international governance architecture. While there is a considerable amount of literature on the emergence, development and effects of transnational activism, an integrated framework that analyses the dynamic interplay between activism, transnational institutions and domestic contexts is still lacking. The framework of transnational pathways of influence intends to help close this gap. It integrates insights from social movement research and insights from institutional theorists. This article outlines this framework and exemplifies it by taking the case of transnational activism within the current global governance architecture. It shows that the study of activism across different trans-national pathways over time helps to understand the combined effects of activist interventions , institutional co-evolution and interaction as an explanation for the process of selective convergence between global norms and local practices.

This CMI Working Paper draws from several years of research in Honduras, including a series of interviews in February 2015, to assess the relationship between civilian and military authority in Honduras today. It highlights the military coup of June 2009 as a turning point wherein the trend towards increased democratic civilian governance was reversed, setting into motion a chain of events that have re-asserted the primacy of the military. It concludes with an evaluation of the current mobilizations of civil society, manifest in major ongoing public demonstrations, and the prospects for reversing the slip into authoritarian rule under Juan Orlando Hernández.

The integration of the countries of eastern and southeastern Europe into global flows of migration has become a major issue not only in migration policy debates , but also in analysing longer term social change in the region. Changes in the magnitudes of migrant remittances can be of crucial social and political importance. In this study, I link a conceptual contribution with a three-step empirical inquiry. First, I conceptualize migrant remittances as a form of external economic dependency. Next, I describe recent changes in the strength of the empirical relationship between migrant remittances as percentages of the GDP and per capita GDP for all societies of the world utilizing data from two online data sets. Employing what Charles Tilly (1984) called " variation-finding comparison, " I examine, next, the – as it turns out, quite sizeable – residual variation in the relative magnitude of remittances that remains after controlling for per capita GDP, and interpret it as a marker for patterns of remittance dependency. Finally, I trace the recent trajectories of the societies that had, until one generation ago, constituted the Soviet " bloc " against the backdrop of the global distribution in remittance dependency. The data have been adopted from two sources: Estimates for migrant remittances as percentages of the GDP of their home country come from the online World Develop

No weakening, but rather an expansion, of statehood can be observed in the contemporary world. This does not, on the other hand, imply that extensive forms of constitutional ordering do not exist outside the realm of states. Instead, the evolution of world society has been characterized by a protracted dual movement where the expansion and densification of statehood and autonomous forms of transnational ordering gradually emerged in a mutually constitutive fashion. One implication of this is that neither the concept of the state nor the concept of nonstate transnational entities is adequately capable of delineating the object of constitutional analysis. Instead, the concept of normative orders has been introduced as an overarching category capable of identifying the contexts within which constitutional ordering emerges.
Subsequently, a distinction between the internal and external dimensions of the law of normative orders has been introduced, specifying them as respectively oriented towards establishing internal condensation of a given normative order and external compatibility between different normative orders. With this background, a framework for the analysis of constitutional frameworks of normative orders is developed. The central element is a distinction among three dimensions: First, a constitution implies a coupling between a constitutional object, in the form of a hierarchical organization of a given normative order capable of reproducing an autonomous source of authority, and a concordant legal framework. Second, constitutionalization implies a coupling between an internal reconstruction of an external constitutional subject within the constitutional object, and the register of legal rights, establishing a framework for exchanges between the constitutional object and the wider world as represented by the constitutional subject. Third, constitutionalism denotes the institutionalization of a double function, in the form of a principle-based and legally fortified striving toward universal inclusion, providing a sense of direction in time through an articulated form of constitutional consciousness.
The insights developed are briefly illustrated by the case of the global Fairtrade Certification System.

This conceptual article argues that the well-established sociological concept of cosmopolitanism has been inadequately applied to organised labour, and specifically to international activities of trade unions. Taking a Marxian perspective, it sets these subjects side-by-side, considering firstly what the experience of international trade unionism can reveal about cosmopolitanism, and secondly theorising the forms cosmopolitanism may take in international trade union activity. In answer to the first question, it seeks to show how the development of cosmopolitanism assumes radically different forms among union members and managerial elites. In answer to the second question, it typologises international trade unionism using two categories termed ‘managerial’ and ‘mobilising’ internationalisms. These categories have material determinants, and in each the interaction between material interest representation and cosmopolitan normativity assumes different forms.