グローバル経済下のアジア,国境と階級関係の再構築 : 経済地理学からのアプローチ(大会報告・共通課題:労働のグローバル化と国家・地域-歴史と現状-)

概要

論文の詳細を見る
An economic or social body needs to place itself in its own spatial container, or territory, by bounding the contiguity of subsumed pristine absolute space. However, the boundary circumscribing the territory inevitably has physical and institutional porosity. In order to maintain the integrity of the economic or social body, the porosity has to be controlled by the body dominating the territory. It may allow or deny elements of society or economy passing through the boundary, in order to bring the configuration and functioning of its economy and society to the optimum. For an independent sovereign nation, the spatial container means its national territory; and the control of the institutional porosity of its international boundary is done through its immigration or customs regulations. Under contemporary globalism, the boundary becomes a contested terrain between the hegemonic nation and subservient sovereign nations, as well as between capital and labour. In order to exercise hegemony, the United States demands that other subservient nations give up control of their boundaries, and open up to the will of such international organisations as the IMF or the WTO, so that multinational industrial and speculative capital can freely move across the globe. As for labour migration, international boundaries are made strictly controlled; thus labour is normally confined within a national territory. High-income sovereign nations control the porosity of international boundaries so as to bring the inflow of labour from low-income nations to the optimum for the configuration of their labour markets. Multinational capital is glad to exploit differences in wage rates of various spatially confined labour markets thus created across the globe, under the principle of the new international division of labour and product cycles. Labour, on the contrary, tries to overcome this spatial confinement by attempting to permeate through the physical porosity and become 'illegal immigrants' in the country on the other side of the border. Many of them are then forced to work in sweatshops and are subjected to the worst kind of exploitation. A typical case demonstrating this spatial relation is found in the 'touch-base policy' engineered by the British Hong Kong government between 1974 and 1980. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hong Kong experienced frequent labour disputes with anti-British demands under the influence of the Cultural Revolution in the PRC. The 'touch-base policy' stipulated that it gave resident status and work permits to PRC Chinese who managed to reach the 'base'-Kowloon or Hong Kong Island- where most of the employment opportunities existed, while 'illegal' migrants found and arrested in the New Territories were repatriated. 70.1% of the successful 'illegal' migrants from the PRC were of the age between 15 and 24, which was the most appropriate for work in factories or on construction sites. Statistical evidence shows that while the 'touch-base policy' was in effect, a stunning parallel relationship existed between the inflow of both legal and 'illegal' migrants from the PRC and the number of days lost in labour disputes, and a negative relationship between the migrant inflow and the unemployment rates. This indicates that there was tacit government control over the in-migration of labour from the PRC in order to control the supply-demand situation of the labour market and concomitant labour disputes. A neo-liberalist Milton Friedman once praised that British Hong Kong was a typical case of successful laissez-faire policy and minimal government intervention; yet the evidence suggests that it was, in fact, subtle intervention to free competition that really brought success to the Hong Kong economy. The ideological nature of the neo-liberalist conception of globalism is thus obvious.
政治経済学・経済史学会の論文
2005-04-30

グローバル経済下のアジア,国境と階級関係の再構築 : 経済地理学からのアプローチ(大会報告・共通課題:労働のグローバル化と国家・地域-歴史と現状-)

スポンサーリンク

概要

著者

関連論文

スポンサーリンク