Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

Arms transfers result from economic and political motives, with the latter often dominating the former. While this is accepted knowledge for the post-World War II period, it seems not to apply earlier. Much existing research argues that in the interwar years, weapons were traded as purely commercial goods because governments had neither the ability nor willingness to control and direct arms transfers. We reassess this idea and argue that, while formal control was largely absent, governments could steer weapons shipments nonetheless because arms producers depended on them as main customers, sales agents, and financiers of their export business. Anecdotal evidence suggests that governments actively used this influence. To test whether interwar arms transfers were the result of political or commercial interests, we use newly collected, historical data on the small arms trade and inferential network analysis methods. Our results suggest that although economic drivers existed throughout the interwar period, political considerations were especially influential when international relations were hostile at the start and end of the period. This research contributes to our understanding of international economic relations between the world wars and of the drivers of arms transfers across time.

In an era where migration and asylum are becoming more securitized, this article argues that unruly action by asylum seekers contributes to decolonization through challenging stratified citizenship and hierarchical immigration laws. I argue through a case of members of the Zimbabwe Vigil in London that diasporas challenge the system within their countries of settlement, enhancing self-determination, and speak back to their homelands by demanding rights where excluded. The article draws from 20 key informant interviews conducted with members of the Zimbabwe Vigil in London and their partners on the ground in Harare, Zimbabwe. Through speaking back to the homeland, these individuals play a role in challenging coloniality within the homeland and thus are agents of decolonization. Ultimately, the article answers calls by scholars to expand and challenge the way we have conceptualized diaspora in addition to the literature on diaspora lobbying, engagement and decolonization.

How do home-state elites react to emigrants who form diaspora communities abroad, and how do these attitudes change over time? The article explores these questions through an analysis of the discourse and policies of Israeli elites towards emigrants who created distinct diaspora communities and established ties with local Jewish diaspora communities between 1977 and 2023. The article highlights the important role that ethnic and national identities and the prospects of emigrants’ eventual return play in such attitudinal shifts. The home state may initially see diaspora formation as harmful for precipitating emigration and obstructing repatriation and ethnic immigration. However, when it becomes clear that the return of many emigrants is unlikely, home-state elites may come to support and even promote the formation of new diaspora communities and their ties with older diaspora communities to offset emigrants’ assimilation into their host society and increase their attachment to the home state.

This study investigates the career paths of 33 graduates from Swiss Hospitality Management schools in China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), exploring the nuances of international credential valuation. It identifies two key factors influencing access to management positions: (1) the degree of internationalization in major cities, which impacts the significance of international versus local skills and (2) individual cosmopolitan capital's role in shaping local career opportunities. The paper introduces a post-colonial conceptualization of cosmopolitan capital, encompassing institutionalized, embodied and objectified forms, challenging Western-centric views. By doing so, it reveals how mechanisms of racialization influence the assessment of international qualifications. In Hong Kong and Shanghai, returning Chinese are prospering in corporate head offices by mobilizing both local/national and international capital, challenging the white privilege of Western managers in this sector. Meanwhile, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the competition is for a pool of ‘international talent’, even though being perceived as ‘Arab’ or ‘white’ seems to improve career prospects.

While the link between the urban network and institutional context has been well established, there has been less work on the effect of shifting political economy on the mechanism of its intercity flows. In this paper, the investment dataset of Chinese publicly listed firms is used to construct corporate-based urban networks with different ownership structures. Two straightforward but effective comparative analyses are conducted. The first distinguishes between networks formed by state-controlled and nonstate-controlled firms, and the second distinguishes between subnetworks formed by central- and local-state power. By surveying the distinctions from the perspectives of state–market relations and central-local government relations, we argue that the urban network in China is shaped by the varied forms in which the central government, local governments, and the private sector interact. To gain a more proper knowledge of the geographical patterns, this research recommends further field research into enterprise-based linkages of multiple ownership.

While researchers have paid growing attention to transnational city engagement in both the policy fields of migration and climate change, there is a dearth of studies exploring how cities claim agency and start acting in emerging global climate mobility debates. Moreover, city diplomacy research tends to focus predominantly on city actors from the global North. We aim to address this research bias and advance academic debates by exploring African city diplomacy in global climate mobility debates. Specifically, we examine the question: How do African cities claim recognition as relevant actors in global dialogues on climate mobility, and what kind of action do they take? To find answers, we draw on a role theory framework analysing empirical research undertaken within an international, interdisciplinary research project.

This article advances sociological work on globalization processes. It concerns itself with conceptualizations of how the local and global ‘clash’, utilizing Ulrich Beck's work on globalization, cosmopolitanism and power. By employing Brazil's 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) men's World Cup as a case, this article seeks to build on Beck's theorizations, into the field of football; using the General Law of the World Cup as a symbolic representation for the global/local, interest-driven interactions between Brazil and FIFA. In particular, this article is concerned with how FIFA's requirements, standards and norms, as imposed on the host nation, were framed within local media and journalistic discourses. The article extends Beck's insights by problematizing how global demands meet local socio-spatial, legal and cultural contexts and how these demands, seeking to regulate and secure consumption, are resisted by various domestic and localized actors situated within a power game.

The aerospace industry is a fast-growing high-tech sector related to the national economic lifeline and national defence security. In the context of prosperous cooperation and fierce competition between countries, a multi-layered global aerospace network, from production to trade, has been formed. However, the high-tech aerospace trade structure and its spatial pattern as the mirror of the industry lack systematic research. This study constructs global high-tech aerospace trade networks to review the trade dynamics, identify the core countries and explore the regional structure and geographical characteristics. Different high-tech aerospace segments show varying evolutionary characteristics, with exports more concentrated than imports. The United States and Western Europe dominate the import and export market in all categories of high-tech aerospace trade, especially in high-end segment, holding organizational authority in the community structure. Although Asia is rising rapidly in some areas, it still has a long way to go to become a global hub.

This paper examines the diverse Lagos international school sector as an arena in which Nigerian families are attempting to (re)produce status and good lives that work transnationally. ‘Elite’ international schools focus on securing entry into Anglo-American universities and distinguish themselves via discourses of ‘modern Britishness’, yet also emphasize the special value of schooling in Nigeria and seek to reproduce circulatory lives. There is also a competitive landscape of ‘mid-range’ international schools that do not simply serve ‘aspirant locals’ but have broad international horizons and are central to transnational family strategies. Lagos schools across the spectrum receive students ‘sent’ from the diaspora, demonstrating they are valued stations in the transnational social field to protect as well as accumulate. The paper contributes to understanding international schools in the ‘global South’ not simply as a backstage to Anglo-American centres but as offering unique resources for families navigating hierarchies at home and abroad.

This article focuses on ethnic hierarchies found within highly educated migrant women working in Istanbul traced through their everyday urban practices. It introduces the stratified and comparative results of migration and resettlement of those from the Global North and the Global South through a comprehensive analysis on their urban lives, including their social positionings, preferences of neighbourhoods and daily patterns of their use of the city. Contrary to the common conception that skilled migrants are privileged, our research reveals inequalities and discriminatory practices they face that intersect with gender, nationality and ethnicity. Our research, based on qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews along with online subjective mapping representing use of the city, also reveals that regardless of their origin and identity, almost all our participants experience verbal/physical sexual harassment or discrimination in public space in Istanbul, which forces women to produce spatial tactics of everyday life.