Global Networks-A Journal of Transnational Affairs最新文献

The global production network (GPN) 2.0 framework mainly considers the organizational capabilities of lead firms, neglecting the influence of supplier capabilities on the strategic making of lead firms. I argue that the GPN 2.0 framework must integrate the influence of supplier capabilities (both industrial and individual firm levels) to better explain the organization of the global economy. Industrial-level capability determines the possible strategic choices that firms may make under certain dynamic combinations, whereas the individual firm level determines the geographic extension direction of GPNs. Therefore, this study incorporates the influence of suppliers and builds a more flexible strategy-making causal mechanism other than the definitive and limiting causal mechanism in GPN 2.0. I hope this article can promote the further development of GPN 2.0 and convey some valuable concepts to make it perform better in deconstructing the organization of the global economy in the real world.

In the past two decades, Australia has shifted from being a settler nation that promoted state-supported permanent migration to one where the scale and relative importance of temporary migration schemes have grown significantly. In 2017, Australia was the second largest issuing country of temporary visa permits after the United States, with temporary migrants applying, on average, for 3.3 temporary visas and spending 6.4 years in this multi-step visa journey to achieve permanent residency . As part of a broader research project on the social implications of temporary migration programs, we examine how Argentine temporary migrants exchange care to navigate temporary visa restrictions and the permanent temporariness in which they live. Our central argument is that transnational and local expressions, practices, and processes of care are co-constituted in particularistic temporary migrant care configurations that facilitate prolonged migration projects and continuity of care over time, despite the precarity that permanent temporariness brings. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Argentine temporary migrants, we illustrate the dynamics in which economic, accommodation, personal, practical, emotional and moral care is exchanged. The findings reveal the central role that transnational economic and practical as well as local, including local virtual, proximity care has in the everyday lives of Argentine temporary migrants. Ironically, their fragile temporariness may be an incentive to develop local support networks or maintain strong transnational ties to survive living in limbo.

Australia's 2018 introduction of the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) broadened the scope and duration of labour mobility pathways available to Pacific Island countries. Although longer term temporary migration schemes like the PLS expand livelihood opportunities for migrant households, they also create challenges related to the maintenance of personal relationships and care practices during transnational family separation. Though pressing concerns for Pacific Island governments, these issues have received little scholarly attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews with migrants and their households in Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu, this article offers some preliminary insights into the way gender norms intersect with the reorganization of socially reproductive labour during migration. Findings indicate that women were disproportionately involved in the performance of additional unpaid care work within migrant households adjusting to transnational family life, but also suggest that women's participation in labour mobility may offer nascent opportunities to increase financial autonomy and social standing through the act of ‘remitting care’.

Over the last two decades, a growing literature has examined the emergence of a transnational business elite. However, the pathways of transnational mobility have not been fully characterized. In this article, we use a combination of sequence analysis and the concept of a career script to investigate the geographical mapping and organizational contexts in which transnational mobility occurs. To achieve this, we rely on a database of 186 executives from the 28 largest Swiss banks, as well as 20 interviews with chief human resource officers and 15 interviews with banking executives. Our findings contribute to relativize and differentiate the phenomenon of transnationalization of business elites by underlining the importance of the career context and by identifying distinct interpretations of international career resources according to different types of banks.

This paper examines how latecomer firms manage to achieve industrial upgrading through strategic coupling with global lead firms in automotive production networks. Drawing upon the example of the Guangzhou Automotive Corporation in southern China, this paper theorizes ‘cross-scalar tension’ as a key factor to explain why the four cases of strategic coupling between lead firms, the same domestic firm and state ended in different results, from decoupling to a sustainable coupling with local upgrading. This paper contributes to the pertinent literature by demonstrating that cross-scalar tension is inherent to the nature of global production networks, and unreconciled tension concerning different corporate strategies on technological transfer, localization and product development could lead to decoupling. Importantly, good coordination and matching on corporate strategies between lead and domestic firms could relieve cross-scalar tensions, thus fostering local industrial upgrading and sustainable strategic coupling.

This article examines a nascent phenomenon in which a cluster of digital platforms mimicking popular Chinese apps has popped up in various cities in the United Kingdom (UK). They have been eagerly adopted by a strong clientele composed mainly of Chinese international students and young working migrants from China. Drawing on data we gathered from the British city of Manchester, one of the most popular destinations for Chinese international students, we propose the concept of home virtuality to illustrate how Chinese student migrants’ frequent surfing of these Chinese-style digital platforms has created a ‘virtual home’ that is quite reminiscent of the platformized lifestyle in China, and that thus offers them a sense of connection to home. We argue that this ‘home virtuality’ does not only imply a virtual connection but is also a home environment materialized through the familiar app services of the new Chinese platform businesses in the UK.

The proliferation of diasporas has expanded the intricate web of political relations on a global scale. Transnationality has increasingly replaced methodological nationalism, and relationality blurred diaspora's boundaries. This article argues for framing diasporas as socio-material assemblages to capture the political agency of diasporas in action in a transnational space. This highlights diasporas’ ability to forge their transnational political actorness and to expand their power of attractiveness. By tracing ideas and things behind the essential task of representing the homeland, this research explores the connections of the Kurdish freedom movement in Europe, making three main arguments. First, it outlines the existence of transnational infrastructures of solidarity, which highlight a multi-ethnic plurality at work. Second, it illuminates the diasporas’ role in the south–north flow of knowledge and political influence. Third, the article examines the desire which stabilizes the assemblage and makes the circulation of ideas possible and smooth.

Sociological research on cross-border class-making often centres on contemporary dynamics of social inequality in the context of migration and mobility. Relying on the cultural–sociological and processual understanding of 'class', the article integrates three bodies of literature to study complexities of global and transnational class-making to overcome the 'presentist' bias. Building on the accounts of the Annales School, and specifically on Fernand Braudel's famous distinction between courte durée, moyenne durée and longue durée of historic time periods, the article brings together three different bodies of research: (i) transnational and intersectional approaches; (ii) conceptual history of class theory and (iii) theories of racial and multi-scalar capitalist dynamics to develop a flexible and relational, but historic-sensitive toolkit for the analysis of global and transnational class-making. One of the greatest advantages of this multi-temporal outlook is that it allows to avoid over-generalizing accounts on the logics of class-making and to unpick potentially heterogeneous dynamics of class (re)production.

International student mobility (ISM) is largely interpreted as a global middle-class capital accumulation strategy. Cosmopolitanism, which is the named outcome and effect of these mobile forms of social and cultural capital, is therefore disproportionately available to already privileged students. This study moves beyond this prevailing interpretation by examining how students from working- or lower-middle-class families with limited resources in Global South countries combine bottom-up cosmopolitanism with educational mobility to get selected into highly competitive spaces, such as the Fulbright Foreign Student Program, the most prestigious educational and cultural program in the United States. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with successful Fulbright applicants and participant observation, my findings suggest that working- and lower-middle-class applicants are largely successful because of their cosmopolitan dispositions which they cultivate in creative and agentive ways. This article adds texture and complexity to existing discussions on middle-class hegemony in ISM and cosmopolitan subject-making.

Transnational studies emphasize the continuous social presence of transnationally mobile people in their countries of origin. However, some of these individuals will disappear, bringing affective turmoil and uncertainty to the families left behind. Although research has focused on political indifference towards undocumented missing migrants, the effects of other mobility regimes on disappearances remain understudied. I explore patterns of Polish transnational disappearance. Poles as European Union citizens occupy a space of privileged mobility. Yet, I argue, they are also susceptible to disappearance and institutional disregard. I analyse four categories of Polish transnationally missing: temporary migrant workers, settled migrants, truck drivers and tourists. I show that each category carries a specific mobile status and an associated perception of vulnerability and traceability, both of which affect the governance of the search. The stratified reaction to Polish disappearances reflects a global mobility hierarchy and exemplifies the exclusionary practices of transnational governance.