Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

We examine the effect of container shipping disruptions on US manufacturing output before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. We augment maritime trade with a global production network model, where the reliability of container logistics is critical for the on-time and full availability of inputs and the delivery of output to foreign markets. We combine a US container shipping reliability dataset with input–output and trade data to construct a novel supply chain disruption index that captures the integration of upstream and downstream linkages of the US manufacturing sector into the global supply chain. Our findings suggest that a one-unit shock leads to a very similar response on output through the upstream (import) and downstream (export) channels. Industries adjust their inventory strategy to cope with supply chain disruptions. Container disruptions affect non-durable industries through the downstream and durable industries through the upstream linkages. Our study highlights the importance of understanding the drivers of a resilient global supply chain.

A complex and contested concept, the well-being of individuals has been researched extensively; however, the well-being of families, as more than the sum total of its members' well-being, has not. In our research, we observe the collective, relational and processual sense of family well-being within Ukrainian and Moldovan transnational families through the plurality of voices and agencies that belong to both adults and children. Parents migrate to ensure the well-being of their children, including their health, which is essential for the well-being of the family. Therefore, a conflict arises between material and emotional well-being and transnational families attempt to balance the two. Finally, they maintain relationality in well-being through shared decisions and strategies, as well as the redistribution of roles and responsibilities. All along, family members, including children, represent well-being collectively, as the ‘well-being of us’ that is a togetherness or a relational whole, their individual well-being remaining relative to that.

It is well established that families maintain ties across national borders. Research shows that caregiving obligations between adult children and their parents can induce care burden and negatively impact well-being, particularly when children are unable to adequately care for parents abroad. Guilt is the most common of personal feelings involved in care burden and yet often neglected in research. Research also highlights gender differences in care burden shaped by social norms, with women typically reporting more guilt than men. However, we still have a poor understanding of the factors leading to difference in feelings of guilt between men and women in transnational families. This article focuses on male and female residents in Germany who provide care to parents living abroad, comparing them with individuals whose parents also reside in Germany. Through this comparison, we aim to deepen the understanding of the specific challenges and well-being outcomes related to caregiving in transnational families. Our findings show that transnational family ties do not inherently increase feelings of care-related guilt. Rather, guilt is higher when parents live in countries with family-oriented institutional care systems and stronger norms of caregiving. Contrary to expectations, these effects are not stronger for women. Still, across all contexts, women report higher levels of guilt than men—regardless of whether care takes place within national borders or across them, and regardless of care institutions and norms.

On the basis of ethnographic research among South Asian students in Runolahti (anonymized), this article explores their experiences during a time of compounded crises. It examines how COVID-19 policies, the Russian war on Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and the termination of fee waivers and stipends at the local university created a polycrisis for current and incoming students. Already facing transnational forms of ‘cumulative precarity’, the prolonged nature of these events prompted them to develop translocal responses and strategies to the globally unfolding polycrisis. The emergence of a food delivery platform in Runolahti presented an opportunity for some, whereas others relied on the university's infrastructure or their personal resources to cope with the polycrisis. Contributing to the literature on international student/migrant precarity, we advocate for a transnationally cumulative lens to its study and offer a translocally grounded theorization of resilient responses it offers, especially at a time when prolonged polycrisis is becoming increasingly normalized.

There has been an increase in the volume of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) throughout the global auto sector, but there is strikingly little empirical detail surrounding the nature, evolution and geographies of this activity. This article addresses this gap by analysing intra- and inter-sectoral M&A deals throughout the period of 2001–2020 to reveal the changing geographical and sectoral composition of the global auto sector. Adopting a GPN 2.0 framework sensitive to financial discipline, it demonstrates how M&As have become a central and growing feature of the auto sector. With the majority of M&A activity being inter-sectoral, findings point towards the increasingly changeable and porous boundaries of auto sector GPNs.

Constructing comprehensive datasets for corporate network analysis remains a significant challenge for the business research community. This study introduces a novel Python tool, NetVizCorpy, which leverages Wikidata to generate such a dataset. We demonstrate its applications by constructing and analysing a global corporate network based on 44 seed electric vehicle (EV) companies and their three-level ownership structures. This dataset includes 1354 unique companies and 1575 ownership relations spanning 58 countries. We provide network characteristics, metrics and statistical insights, along with three detailed analytical applications. First, betweenness centrality identifies key influential companies, highlighting the role of financial institutions in industry resilience. Second, community detection reveals strategic positioning by EV manufacturers within global markets. Third, we find a nonlinear inverse U-shaped relationship between Global Network Connectivity (GNC) and Gross Competitive Intensity (GCI) at the country level. These findings offer new directions for understanding the resilience and competitiveness of the global EV industry.

This article uses the phenomenon of parcel sending as a lens onto Moldovan transnationalism, unravelling how transnationalism is done, experienced and remembered from different subject positions. Through an ethnographic approach that emphasises a long-term and relational perspective on migration, this article explores the role of parcel-related memories and sensory dimensions, such as taste and smell, in understanding how migrants and their now-adult children remember and rationalise their transnational experiences. The research illustrates how memories of parcels are evoked through the senses, opening up migration stories beyond parcels’ immediate content and meanings, highlighting evolving children's experiences of their parents’ emigration on the one side, and revealing the hardship of migration journeys on the other. In conclusion, we suggest that studying sensory memories of parcels offers a productive direction for advancing (sensory) transnational migration research that is reflective of broader societal conditions and transformations.

Faced with the growing influence of multinational corporations on global politics and economy, civil society organizations play an increasing role in holding corporations accountable for human rights violations and environmental degradation. However, the effectiveness of global civil society in this role and the consequences of power dynamics between donors and funded organizations for corporate accountability (CA) strategies are still disputed. This article uses original data on 290 civil society actors to examine the role of funding sources for the organizations’ repertoires and aims. The main findings reveal that receiving funding from state or government authorities reduces the probability of using contentious strategies, whereas funding from charities has no such effect. Funding from state or government authorities also diminishes the likelihood of organizations to pursue more radical claims such as economic reforms. Such funding, then, becomes an impediment to seeking structural change and to employing more radical repertoires. The article concludes that CA initiatives, while using the tools and resources that the current legal, economic and political system provides, can, at least potentially, fail to have the intended effect. Rather than challenging power and provoking structural change, they can contribute to cementing existing power structures and legitimizing dominant discourses.