Globalization is one of the most controversial topics in today's world. Globalization raises fears and apprehensions and the most prominent one that stands out is the growing power of multinational firms that bestows them with the right to retract jobs whenever and wherever they want. Globalization is regarded as one of the main causes of the increasing level of unemployment in Europe and in some other developed countries. In the 1990's, though the economists have depicted that only a small part of unemployment was due to globalization, the general population has not been able to gauge what the real reason could be. Globalization can also be described as the increase in the opportunity for business activities. Firstly, it depicts high growth in international trade (mainly goods and services but capital flows towards quite a few countries encourages foreign investments). Secondly it shows acceleration in information circulation and in technological progress.
[...] These are examples of what flexibility means in terms of changes in employment. The notions of job and employment have changed in themselves. The workers situations are now unstable, which is the source of the criticism of globalization. Worker migrations Flexibility implies that in their adaptation to the job market workers may have to go in a different region or in a different country. That can lead top a destabilization of economies: in the countries from which people leave and also in the countries where people go. [...]
[...] Yet empirical studies and statistics show that the globalization has a rather weak effect on employment in developed countries in quantitative terms. Only 400,000 to 500,000 jobs would have been cut because of delocalizations in France in the 1990s. That does not cover a huge proportion of the three million jobless French people. The effect is concerned mainly some sectors that entirely disappeared or suffered greatly because of too high labor costs. For example, the shoe industry in France Another idea against the thesis that globalization raises unemployment is easy to understand when one looks at the US economy, the most globalized economy in the world. [...]
[...] The destabilizing effects of globalization on the notion of employment 3 main destabilizing effects: The need for flexibility Globalization is a process impossible to stop, one needs to adapt to this phenomenon and adapt to a more and more global environment, especially about employment environment. Trying to escape globalization may lead to a lack of technology relatively to other countries because firms do not have the same need of technological progress to remain competitive if the state protects them to resist globalization. [...]
[...] Some factors tend to compensate the unemployment created through delocalizations and globalization The first factor limiting the damages to developed economies is that by trading with developing countries and delocalizing production units, firms raise wealth among these countries and give workers higher buying power. That's the way trade liberalization contributes to development. When developing themselves, developing countries will need products that they cannot produce because of lack of capital stock and technology. They will have to import them from developed countries. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
