Until recently Australian research on migration, âraceâ and multiculturalism has been mainly focused on domestic experiences. Where international comparisons are made, the first reference has been to other white settler societies (US, Canada and New Zealand), second to the UK and â a distant third â Western Europe. The same applies to theory: most conceptual imports come from white settler societies and old industrial countries (Connell 2007). In recent years, research on Australiaâs multicultural society has been increasingly concerned with non-European ethnic groups, and how they relate to Australian culture and values, and this has led to some research on the cultural practices and values to be found in origin countries. But, with some notable exceptions (such as the work of the late Graeme Hugo), there has been little research on migration and diversity in Asia and other world regions. This is beginning to change, through increasing contacts and cooperation with Asian and Pacific colleagues, but Anglo and Eurocentric biases remain strong.
This chapter is based on the work of the Social Transformation and International Migration (STIM) project at the University of Sydney, which since 2009 has been studying the effects of neoliberal globalisation on the economies and societies of four very different countries: Mexico, Turkey, South Korea and Australia.1 A main focus of the project has been to understand how the social transformations brought about by global change have shaped human mobility.2 A first book presenting background information and preliminary findings of the project was published in 2015 (Castles et al. 2015).3
This chapter is based on an initial analysis of part of the research data.4 It will give a brief introduction to the theory and methods used in the STIM project, and go on to discuss findings on one of the projectâs four main research topics: âthe remaking of economy and society in the epoch of neoliberalismâ, in just one of the four countries studied: South Korea.5 Where possible, comparisons with our Australian case study will also be made.
Social transformation and neoliberal globalisation
The STIM projectâs conceptual framework is based on the idea that it is important to distinguish between social change and the more fundamental process of social transformation (Castles 2010, 2015; Castles et al. 2011). Social change is a constant but mostly gradual process in the majority of societies (see Portes 2010). By contrast, our working definition of social transformation is:
A shift in social relationships so profound that it affects virtually all forms of social interaction, and all individuals and communities simultaneously. It is a âstep changeâ that goes beyond the normal processes of change that are always at work.
The driving factor in such a change may appear to be technology, economics or military power, but characteristic of such epochal shifts is that simultaneous transformations occur in culture, social relationships, social institutions (such as the family), personal and community identities, ideologies and politics. For example, the introduction of new technologies based on steam power was widely seen as the basis of Britainâs industrial revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the emergence of market liberalism was equally important. Today, new technologies of transport, communication and control are often perceived as the basis of globalisation (later reinforced by the end of the Cold War), but the rise of neoliberal ideology is also crucial.
Polanyiâs theory of âThe Great Transformationâ
Our starting point for a theory of social transformation is Karl Polanyiâs (2001) work (first published in 1944): The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Polanyi seeks to understand the causes of the twentieth-century crisis of European society, tracing its roots to the âutopian endeavour of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market systemâ (Polanyi 2001: 31). According to Polanyi, the market liberalism of the nineteenth century ignored the embeddedness of the economy in society (its role in achieving social goals laid down by politics, religion, ethics and social custom).
A key aspect of Polanyiâs analysis is the notion of âfictitious commoditiesâ. Market liberalism treated labour, land and money as commodities to be traded for profit. But labour refers to human beings, land to nature, and money to a symbol of value. None of these were actually produced for the market, and including them in the market mechanism âmeans to subordinate the substance of society to the laws of the marketâ (Polanyi 2001: 75). This commodification of labour, land and money was a central cause of the massive impoverishment and social evils of early industrialism. The liberal attempt to disembed the market was thus a âstark utopiaâ leading to a double movement; a protective countermovement to resubordinate the economy to society, for example through trade unionism, industrial legislation and the emergence of labour parties. However, in the crises of the first half of the twentieth century, the countermovement led on inexorably to fascism, Stalinism and world war (Block and Polanyi 2003; Polanyi 2001).
From a twenty-first-century perspective, Polanyiâs theory had severe limitations, for it focused on the industrial countries of Europe and North America and failed to analyse the forms of labour exploitation elsewhere, and their significance for capitalism. Labour historian Jan Breman, for example, argues that Polanyiâs analysis is not relevant to contemporary Asia. According to Breman (2010), Polanyi claimed that âwhat began as a catastrophe turned out to be the beginning of a vast movement of economic improvement that signified the growing control of human society (again) over runaway marketsâ. But Bremanâs research in India found that while migrant workers leave the country, they never âarriveâ in the city. They never obtain the right to settle permanently in industrial cities or to bring their families to join them. They do seasonal or temporary work, are paid by the day, have only makeshift accommodation, and have to leave when their job is over. The huge labour reserves in rural India, together with repression by employers and authorities, make any resistance movements â such as trade unions â impossible (Breman 2010).
Can Bremanâs critique, based on his many years of research in India, be extrapolated to the rest of Asia, and indeed the rest of the developed world? As will be discussed below, Polanyian theory seems to fit very well with the social transformation of South Korea over the last half century. This indicates the need for differentiation in analysis of contemporary Asia, which, after all, makes up 60 per cent of the worldâs population.
Neoliberal globalisation as a new âGreat Transformationâ
Polanyi provides a valuable critique of the key principle of market liberalism that the economy is self-regulating and should be seen as quite separate from the rest of society. This approach provides a conceptual model for a contemporary critique of neoliberal globalisation, which is sometimes seen as âthe second great transformationâ (see for example, Burawoy 2000; Munck 2002).6 As Stiglitz (2001: vii) has argued, âbecause the transformation of European civilization is analogous to the transformations confronting developing countries around the world today, it often seems as if Polanyi is speaking directly to present day issuesâ. Yet, as Munck (2006: 180) writes, there is a need to âscale upâ Polanyiâs theory, that is, to examine new trends in capital mobility and trade, and the impact of these on inequality between and within countries. A recent outline of how to go about this â focusing particularly on the causes of inequality â can be found in (Burawoy 2015).
The processes of accelerated economic globalisation since the 1970s and the reshaping of political and military power relationships since the end of the Cold War may be seen as a new âgreat transformationâ (for more detail see Introduction and Conclusion to Castles et al. 2015). Characteristic of this new phase is that the main engine of global transformation is the âfinancialisationâ of economic and social relationships â a new stage in the commodification of money. Dominance in manufacturing has ceased to be the main source of wealth; instead, financial control and the ability to capture the main profits in global value chains has become crucial (Polanyi Levitt 2013). Another key aspect is the emergence of knowledge-based economies and the resulting commodification of intellectual capabilities, which means that knowledge itself should be seen as a fourth fictitious commodity in Polanyian terms (Jessop 2007). A new form of labour market restructuring is thus the outsourcing of routine white-collar jobs (call centres and business process activities) and even research and development activities to countries with relatively low salary levels but high-quality education.7
Polanyi (2001: 3â4) believed that society would protect itself against the perils of the free market by seeking to re-embed the market into society. As Stiglitz (2001: xiâxii) argues:
Rapid transformation destroys old coping mechanisms, old safety nets, while it creates a new set of demands, before new coping mechanisms are developed. This lesson from the nineteenth century has, unfortunately, all too often been forgotten by the advocates of the Washington consensus, the modern day version of the liberal orthodoxy. [emphasis in original]
Activism against neoliberal globalisation is a contemporary form of counter-movement against hegemony, to be found both in developed countries and emerging industrial nations. The Occupy Movement in the US, the Indignados in Spain and the World Social Forum are examples of explicitly political resistance (Castells 2015). Grass-roots-level resistance can be seen in the spate of protests against dispossession of peasant farmers in China, or resistance by poor people in India against displacement for dam, airport or luxury housing projects (Roy 1999; Cernea and McDowell 2000). Social scientists can thus reformulate Polanyiâs idea of the âdouble movementâ from a non-Eurocentric perspective by examining how social transformation processes are mediated by local historical and cultural patterns, through which people develop varying forms of agency and resistance. These can take the shape of religious or nationalist movements, but also of individual, or family-level livelihood strategies, including ruralâurban or international migration.
Social transformation and human mobility
A theory of global change in which the economy is seen as disembedded from society, and the political and social consequences of economic activities are treated as inevitable âexternalitiesâ (as economists put it), leads also to a disembedded understanding of migration. This means seeking the determinants of migration in individual rational choices based on economic interests. The crucial link to massive changes in global economic and political power relationships and the resulting social transformation processes is absent. The failure of policymakers and analysts to see international migration as a dynamic social process leads both to policy failure and to a wide range of political and social problems, including systematic violation of the human rights of vulnerable populations. Human mobility should be understood as an essential component of change, shaped not just by economic factors but also by complex historical, cultural and social factors.
Neoliberalism has brought about a new phase in the commodification of labour through the promotion of a global labour market, based not only on human capital (possession of educational and vocational credentials) but also on race, ethnicity, gender, national origins and legal status (Castles 2011; Munck et al. 2011). This global labour market is a crucial context for the analysis of international migration (Phillips 2011). Internal migration is also linked to globalisation of labour markets, for it often represents ruralâurban migration to provide labour for emerging industries, which produce components of global value chains. Internal migration is much larger in volume than international migration, and is especially important in countries with dualistic economies and large populations, such as China, India and Brazil. The STIM project focused on international migration, but internal migration also proved to be an important aspect of social transformation, especially in Turkey and South Korea.
Methodology
A key methodological objective of the STIM project was to understand how global change processes were mediated through national and local historical experiences, institutions, cultures and identities. We were also concerned with how people (both migrants and non-migrants) perceived and explained change. This made it necessary to develop a comparative and multi-scalar approach. The conceptual basis of our methodology is discussed in detail in a book chapter by one of the researchers (Williamson 2015). She sums up the significance of a multi-scalar approach as follows:
A multi-scalar approach . . . attempts to unsettle ontological assumptions about the different scales at which migration and processes of transformation are meaningful. This works to challenge tendencies towards methodological nationalism and, in doing so, questions fixed analytical frames that prioritize national territory and belonging over other scales of belonging. Such an approach therefore elucidates how scalar concepts work by examining how migration is variously aligned with definitions of national belonging, economic growth, global integration or local place-identities, for example, which operate to embed or dis-embed migration and migrants-as-subjects from society.
(Williamson 2015: 29, emphasis in original)
Operationalising this approach required partnerships with researchers in the case study countries, to benefit from their cultural and historical understanding. A member of the Sydney research team spent up to six months in either Mexico, South Korea or Turkey, where they collected material and interviewed key informants, such as members of parliament, government officials, lawyers, academics and representatives of NGOs and migrant organisations. With the help of research partners, localities profoundly affected by migration were selected for local case studies; these are:
- Casa Blanca, a village in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, where most families had experience of migration to the US;
- Kumkapı, an inner-city neighbourhood of Istanbul, which has had h...
