Globalization in Contemporary World, Slides of Contemporary Literature

Download Globalization in Contemporary World and more Slides Contemporary Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Noah Mae S. Tadeo BSED 2-2 President Duterte’s lament on globalization By Rene E. Ofreneo November 15, 2017 Rene E. Ofreneo ILABOREM EXERCENS. — In the recently concluded Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Vietnam, President Duterte addressed a side assembly of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) working in this fast-growing neighbor of ours. Most of these OFWs happen to be professionals and skilled workers. And yet, in the YouTube documentation of his speech, the President devoted the first 15 minutes of his hourlong speech bemoaning the brain drain that has slowed down the country’s industrial progress. Paano ang mga naiwan? [What now for those left behind?]” was his plaintive question. He elaborated that, the exodus of the country’s best and brightest has stunted the growth of domestic industry and agriculture, including livestock raising. He said that, without these talents, industrial development in the Philippines has been so weak we cannot even produce decent toothpicks. Insummary, the President’s message is a reiteration of what we have been saying: Filipino talents are the country’s gift to the world, in particular to the more developed labor-receiving countries that are always in short supply of engineers, information-technology (IT) programmers, doctors and other professionals and skilled workers. The economy of a number of Middle East countries are likely to be impaired, even grounded to a halt, if there will be a massive return migration of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). In the North sea oil-drilling project in Europe, the rig engineers and workers who go down’ to’ the sea _ floor several kilometers deep are mostly Filipinos. It is, thus, ironic that while these OFWs are able to contribute to the development of other countries, they are not able to share their God-given talents and skills in building a more progressive Philippines. Their contributions to the home country come mostly in the form of remittances, most of which are spent either on imported consumption goods or on the service industries (malling, real estate, education, etc.) that the Sys, Gokongweis, Ayalas and Gaisanos have been building to take advantage of a remittance-driven economy. Industry complaints on the adverse impact of the brain and skills drain were registered as early as the late-1970s, when the “manpower export” was officially launched by the martial-law government as a “temporary” program while the country was still waiting for the “labor- intensive export-oriented” (LIEO) industrialization of National Economic and Development Authority to bear fruits in terms of robust growth and job creation. The LIEO tree failed to bear the anticipated miracle fruits of more jobs and more development. Instead, the exodus of skills and talents even intensified in the succeeding decades of the 1980s to 1990s as almost all continents of the world, including the North Pole, became the destination for our migrant Noah Mae S. Tadeo BSED 2-2 workers. The list of professionals and skills leaving the Philippine shores also grew exponentially, covering not only the construction industry (mainly for the Middle East) but also the IT industry, health sector, finance, mining and so on. Complaints of Philippine-based industries also grew—from the loss of scarce skills, such as those possessed by expert electricians, plumbers and carpenters to the cost of training provided by industry to those who eventually become migrant workers. One old theoretical debate on migration states that the departure of OFWs represents a drain; however, the OFWs, upon their return to the home country, bring with them new or enhanced skills that they can apply at home. In short, these OFWs can become industry innovators and job creators. This argument is illustrated in the case of South Korea, which was a major exporter of manpower in the 1970s and 1980s and which became a major importer in reverse once it reached the “migration hump” in the 1990s because of its rapid industrial growth. In the case of the Philippines, this did not happen. Very few successful and rich OFWs invested on job-creating undertakings utilizing the know-how they acquired from working overseas. Also, there were hardly anyone who went into industrial development based on the knowledge and skills that they gained from certain industries abroad. For example, there were no records that those who worked as professionals and skilled workers in the high-tech small and medium enterprises of South Korea and Taiwan, such as watch making, IT parts assembly and shoe production were able to set up similar ventures in the Philippines upon their return or retirement. The point is that migration, as a platform for industrialization, has not worked in the Philippines, as lamented by President Duterte himself. Meantime, more problems are cropping up. The Middle East, which hosts the most number of OFWs, is a powder keg and can explode in a big way. The Shia-Sunni conflict, not to mention the terror campaign of the Islamic fundamentalist ISIS group, is putting the two big powers of the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia, on a collision course. Some OFW communities are also affected by the rising xenophobia in Europe, America and other places. What will the Duterte administration do if there is a sudden massive return migration of OFWs? This question is not new. It was also raised in the past administrations, and, fortunately, this never happened. Instead, there were only some dislocations in a few host countries involving only a few thousand OFWs, not millions. Nonetheless, the question remains valid and should be raised given the uncertain times we are in. The government should always be ready with its contingency plans. However, the immediate policy challenge to the Duterte administration is how to revisit the issues of migration and industrialization. Paano babalikan ang napag-iwanang industriya at agrikultura ng bansa? The phenomenal growth of migration as a life saver for the country is due to the phenomenal failure of industry and agriculture to grow under the LIEO and export- oriented industries development programs from the 1970s to the present. Some economic commentators claim that the Philippines is a victim of the “Dutch disease,” that is, industrialization has been stunted by national dependence on a resource abundance in the form of OFW remittances. This is clearly not the case because the growth of migration came about precisely because of the poor growth of industry. Noah Mae S. Tadeo BSED 2-2 The past decade of economic integration has been fuelled by promises of barriers coming down, of increased mobility and greater freedom. And yet 13 years after the celebrated collapse of the Berlin Wall we are surrounded by fences yet again, cut off - from one another, from the earth and from our own ability to imagine that change is possible. The economic process that goes by the euphemism "globalization" reaches into every aspect of life, transforming every activity and natural resource into a measured and owned commodity. As the Hong Kong-based labor researcher Gerard Greenfield points out, the current stage of capitalism is not simply about selling more products across borders. It is also about feeding the market's insatiable need for growth by redefining as "products" entire sectors that were previously considered part of "the commons" and not for sale. The invading of the public by the private has reached into categories such as health and education, of course, but also ideas, genes, seeds, now purchased, patented and fenced off. With copyright now the US's single largest export (more than manufactured goods or arms), international trade law must be understood not only as taking down selective barriers to trade but more accurately as a process that systematically puts up new barriers - around knowledge, technology and newly privatized resources. These Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights are what prevent farmers from replanting their Monsanto patented seeds and make it illegal for poor countries to manufacture cheaper generic drugs to get to their needy populations. Globalization is now on trial because on the other side of all these virtual fences are real people, shut out of schools, hospitals, workplaces, their own farms, homes and communities. Mass privatization and deregulation have bred armies of locked-out people, whose services are no longer needed; who's basic needs go unmet. These fences of social exclusion can discard an entire industry, and they can also write off an entire country, as has happened to Argentina. In the case of Africa, essentially an entire continent can find itself exiled to the global shadow world, appearing only during wartime when its citizens are looked on with suspicion as would-be terrorists or anti-American fanatics. In fact, remarkably few of globalization's fenced-out people turn to violence. Most simply move: from countryside to city, from country to country. And that's when they come face to face with distinctly unvirtual fences, the ones made of chain link and razor wire, reinforced with concrete and guarded with machine guns. Whenever I hear the phrase "free trade", I can't help picturing the caged factories I visited in the Philippines and Indonesia that are all surrounded by gates, watchtowers and soldiers - to keep the highly subsidized products from leaking out and the union organizers from getting in. I think, too, about a recent trip to the South Australian desert where I visited the infamous Woomera detention centre. At Woomera, hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi refugees, fleeing oppression and dictatorship in their own countries, are so desperate for the world to see what is going on behind the fence that they stage hunger strikes, jump off the roofs of their barracks and sew their mouths shut. These days' newspapers are filled with gruesome accounts of asylum seekers attempting to make it across national borders by hiding themselves among the products that enjoy so much more mobility than they do. All these fences are connected: the real ones are needed to enforce the virtual ones, the ones that put resources and wealth out of the hands of so many. It simply isn't possible to lock away this much of our collective wealth without an accompanying strategy to control popular unrest and Noah Mae S. Tadeo BSED 2-2 mobility. Security firms do their biggest business in the cities, where the gap between rich and poor is greatest - Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, and New Delhi - selling iron gates, armored cars, elaborate alarm systems and renting out armies of private guards. Brazilians, for instance, spend $4.5bn a year on private security, and the country's 400,000 armed rent-a-cops outnumber actual police officers by almost four to one. It now seems that these gated compounds protecting the haves from the have-nots are microcosms of what is fast becoming a global security state - not global village intent on lowering walls and barriers, as we were promised, but a network of fortresses connected by highly militarized trade corridors. The West rarely sees the fences and the artillery. The gated factories and refugee detention centers remain tucked away in remote places. But over the past few years some fences have intruded into full view - often, fittingly, during the summits where this brutal model of globalization is advanced. When Quebec City hosted the Summit of the Americas in April 2001 the Canadian government took the unprecedented step of building a cage around not just the conference centre, but the downtown core, forcing residents to show official documentation to get to their homes and workplaces. Another popular strategy is to hold the summits in inaccessible locations: the 2002 G8 meeting was held deep in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and the 2001 WTO meeting took place in the repressive Gulf state of Qatar. The "war on terrorism" has become yet another fence to hide behind, used by summit organizers to explain why public shows of dissent just won't be possible this time around or, worse, to draw threatening parallels between legitimate protesters and terrorists bent on destruction. But what are reported as menacing confrontations are often joyous events, as much experiments in alternative ways of organizing societies as criticisms of existing models. The first time I participated in one of these counter-summits, I remember having the distinct feeling that some sort of political portal was opening up - a gateway, a window, "a crack in history", to use subcomandante Marcos's beautiful phrase. This opening was a sense of possibility, a blast of fresh air. These protests - which are actually week-long marathons of intense education on global politics, late-night strategy sessions, festivals of music and street theatre - are like stepping into a parallel universe. Urgency replaces resignation, strangers talk to each other, and the prospect of a radical change in political course seems like the most logical thought in the world. Other kinds of windows are opening as well, quiet conspiracies to reclaim privatized spaces and assets for public use. Maybe it's students kicking ads out of their classrooms or setting up media centers with free software. Maybe it's Thai peasants planting organic vegetables on over-irrigated golf courses, or landless farmers in Brazil cutting down fences around unused lands and turning them into farming cooperatives. And once reclaimed, these spaces are also being remade. In neighborhood assemblies, at city councils in community-run farms, a new culture of vibrant direct democracy is emerging. It is not clear what will emerge from these liberated spaces, or if what emerges will be hardy enough to withstand the mounting attacks from the police and military, as the line between terrorist and activist is deliberately blurred. The question of what comes next preoccupies me, as it does everyone else who has been part of building this international movement. As I look again at these article clippings, I see them for what they are: postcards from dramatic moments in time, Noah Mae S. Tadeo BSED 2-2 a record of the first chapter in a very old and recurring story, the one about people pushing up against the barriers that try to contain them, opening up windows, breathing deeply, tasting freedom. Summary: Globalization, she said, that in some other country has a fences that is like a wall or barriers separating people from previously public resources, locking them away from much needed land and water, restricting their ability to move across borders, to express political dissent, to demonstrate on public streets, even keeping politicians from enacting policies that make sense for the people who elected them. “The economic process that goes by the euphemism "globalization" reaches into every aspect of life, transforming every activity and natural resource into a measured and owned commodity. In fact, remarkably few of globalization's fenced-out people turn to violence. Most simply move: from countryside to city, from country to country.” said by Naomi. Globalization is now on trial because on the other side of all these virtual fences are real people, shut out of schools, hospitals, workplaces, their own farms, homes and communities. Mass privatization and deregulation have bred armies of locked-out people, whose services are no longer needed; who's basic needs go unmet. So for the fenced-out people she said, they must start pushing up against the barriers that try to contain them, opening up windows, breathing deeply, and tasting freedom.