Global Borders

ASERA conducts qualitative and quantitative research in all fields of study relating to philosophies of society, education, economics, environment  communications and management. It is primarily interested in analytical, evaluative and policy research and cooperates with qualified teams of international researchers from pubic and private universities or institutions of higher learning. The academy also conducts courses and workshops on research management and planning and human resource development in research and data analysis. A primary concern is the germination of critical thinking in applied economic sciences to spur on excellence in economic and social research on globalisation.
The Academy is also concerned for more extensive research collaboration among Asian institutions of higher learning and between the developed West and Asia. In Asia generally, universities promote research in science and technology which are media worthy but which are not necessarily significant breakthroughs in scientific and social thinking. ASERA collaborates in efforts to develop research breakthroughs in the economic and social sciences which are theory worthy in an effort to promote the value of interdisciplinary research and to upgrade theories of globalisation and macro-economics which can affect the socio-economic life of a global society. 
“Global Borders” is a subject reference to describe the increasing categorical inconsistencies, oppositional positions and dualisms which people are subject to in everyday relations. Globalisation is described in economic terms , as “a process enabling financial and investment markets to operate internationally, largely as a result of deregulation and improved communications (Collins) or “to make worldwide in scope and application’ (Webster).More recently, it has been described as an ‘entity’ and ‘process’ ‘that could have more than just an economic impact on the parts of the world it touched’ (S. Jeffrey, ) Jeffrey further states that ‘globalisation took a life of its own’. It is interesting that without much ado, the global age of post-industrial economics developed its infrastructure from the information age and knowledge became the new buzz word of wealth and success. In the industrial age prior to globalisation, the economic revolution of industrial growth also created a life force of its own as it uprooted farmers, women and youth from the rural economy and made them workers of service and manufacturing industries- neo-Marxists called them the new ‘proletariats’ of the city. It shrunk extended families into nuclear but did not create alternative support structures for families to operate in the cities causing social fragmentation and instability .But this became a way of life and people learned the art of urban survival, walking lonely in a crowd and drawing comfort from alienation, safe with the thought that productive work with an enterprise was the ultimate form of survival. Soon they developed their own ethnic enclaves, networks and triads to secure their own  niche and the city evolved into a plural entity with multiple systems of exclusivity and legitimacy.
Labour became human capital and contributed fundamentally to the wealth of the nation. Young men and women were persuaded by the State to work in clean, smoke-free factories in Free Trade Zones and the services it generated because it was “a good thing”. One could make immediate monetary contributions to the family and benefit from a new found freedom never known before. But these young men and women, indeed even the happy farmers of the city in the least developed and developing world were not prepared for the sudden news  that knowledge was now the prime mover of wealth with its own ability to generate value-added capital. The majority understood that productive work alone was enough. But one had now to be a “ knowledge worker” or  belong to the stockpile of  “floating labour”-cheap, fluid, dispensable human labour  or what has been referred to by  Angell as ‘the surplus of humanity’. In the global age, productive work loses its power to influence organizational  behaviour because the owners of capital control the knowledge to generate new capital  and along with it the global systems which make them invisible and faceless , safely operating from distant lands never ventured by workers. Trade unionism buckled under the loss of the adversary and industrial arbitration lost its dynamic appeal. Workers were suddenly reminded that they were operating under mysterious labour systems when the multinationals from which they drew their wages had moved to “cheaper lands”
One is constantly reminded that globalisation is a phenomena different from internationalisation in that it transcends borders of identity based in the nation-state, territoriality and citizenry.Yet the political culture of  globalisation is founded in events which alienate people from the creative process of decision-making about what are or should constitute the contents of this political culture. More specifically, people in the Asia-Pacific, Africa and the least developed nations of the world are without doubt the most passive recipients of global processes while the active directors of the rules of engagement of these  process are located in States in the advanced West. Indeed the deeper structures of legitimisation of rules and institutions which guide this process are not generally understood by people of the advanced West who go along with new lines of thinking of “inevitable” future global scenarios because they have been convinced by their leaders that these new global scenarios will secure their livelihoods and enable the western democratic process to shape the rest of the world.
 A consensual media hype back the statements of these powerful political leaders. A global world produces equality, prosperity and well-being because it is founded in principles of democracy and economic liberalism. A world leader cannot go wrong with this statement and people are proud to think that their leaders can bring an end to world poverty and create a new global history. There has been proven evidence to back this and the owners of global capital who are also the owners of global media networks are quick to point this out. The collapse of communism and socialism in East Europe the Soviet Republic, China and  regions in Southeast Asia has opened markets and deregulated labour encouraging a free flow of capital, workers and resources according to natural forces of supply and demand. When supply meets demand, people who have been poor with low prospects of employment and mobility are able to find work in neighbouring or distant countries but irregularities of employment give rise to exploitation and eventually dissidence at work. ‘Floating labour” is kept at “floating wages” according to the degree of labour regulation abided by different countries. “Bordernet” workers who are for the most, workers without work permits are most open to exploitation since they are commuters and as illegal workers are generally excluded from any form of organised negotiation or unionism.  Rising inequalities of income between the North and South, workers and owners of capital have been contradicted by arguments of increasing incentives, opportunities and choices ;  people are free to enjoy a variety of choices of places of work as long as they are equipped with information and knowledge on how to achieve it.
Globalisation establishes a state of “wellness” for the worker regardless of ethnicity, culture or politics but it is knowledge-based and requires greater investments of capital to generate the right kind of human capital suitable for a more competitive global work environment. However, since economic globalisation is capital and resource driven and has developed its structures of delivery even before people in the less and least developed world have had time to understand the commitments that have to be made in knowledge transformation, they continue to seek  work in manufacturing and service industries which have reached their doorsteps  without realising that this kind of work is not part of the process of new wealth creation. After all cheap unskilled labour is still in demand only more volatile and fluid without loyalty and commitment. Human capital continues to embody the global structures of wealth creation for the owners of capital, for at the fringes of the process of globalisation, cheap labour is necessary to generate the goods and services of the new global economy. The principle is to keep it cheap, unrepresented and as far as possible alienated from the brains of the global  enterprise .
‘Wellness” then is a concept of the global enterprise- to develop the notion of ‘competitive advantage’- that to go “global” is more advantageous than to restrict one’s chances to the ‘local’ or ‘regional’. Nevertheless, in the context of work and enterprise, there are already global institutions which are in place to determine the preconditions of performance and most countries on the receiving end of these rules will find it impossible to contribute to the higher end of capitalisation and production because they are still involved in industries which are labour intensive. They have higher rates of population growth and younger populations than the advanced West. Indeed capital-intensive enterprises have skillfully adapted to the contrasting demographic structures of “women givers” and “women receivers” countries which are not necessarily demarcated by Western-Eastern geo-political locations. The low population growth, high educational and technological advancements in the advanced West have paid off for these countries can now dictate the terms of trade and investment in countries with large labour reserves. The majority of African and Southeast Asian nations can be described as early industrial or late industrial while developed countries are post-industrial and reaching high levels of maturation in the acquisition of technologies for knowledge-based economies. Hence the age of globalisation rests on a global dynamics of unequal advantage creating greater social inequalities of access to capital, knowledge and   resources .The demographic, socio-economic and political structures of Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America are far too behind the advanced West to respond to globalisation in the same way.
These contradictions become even more apparent when highly skilled human  capital migrate to the more developed West because they are able to offer higher economic incentives or better research environments. The United States and the European Union have benefited from the massive loss of talent from India, China, South Korea and Taiwan and this has also led to a boom of creativity and inventiveness where patents and intellectual property have become the new capital resources of advanced Western economies.  India and China are being closely watched since they are the two likely Asian countries to develop a competitive edge over the United States and the European Union with their surplus of talent and human capital but their high economic growth rates are accompanied by growing income differentials which are more significant than the advanced West. It is obvious at this point that the least developed and developing countries will not be able to develop a stockpile of new intellectual wealth as long as patents and intellectual property registered in the advanced West override those in Asia. An artificial knowledge lag will be created as more Asian patents are registered in the United States. The pace of global competitiveness is also too fast for developing countries to comprehend because one step behind in knowledge acquisition can bring obsolescence on a national scale. Again the high ratings of American and European institutions of higher learning attract the best Northeast, South and Southeast Asian young talent to these universities leading to growing hierarchies of preference between foreign and local graduates, further affecting salaries and job mobility. In Asia, there is growing discrimination against local graduates in the private sector as more multinational and local enterprises recruit  graduates from established foreign universities .
If local universities attract the best young talent, these hierarchies might disappear at some point but it is doubtful if this will happen as more European and American universities open their doors to Asian students who pay full fees. Educational investments of this kind also benefit young Asian talent .Asians develops global competitiveness at an early age because standards of global competitiveness are produced from the advanced West .However ethnic and faith issues remain a barrier to global competitiveness. Muslim graduates from the United Kingdom in particular, continue to express their frustrations in job recruitment in the United Kingdom. A Muslim graduate from the University of Leeds who helps his father in a fish and chips stall is hardly engaged in “gainful employment”. These Muslim graduates may only obtain gainful employment from Muslim enterprises and these are limited in scope and content. In Asia, a local graduate with talent and more versed with local cultural sensitivities may be more successful in establishing local enterprises which may be expanded into regional outlets but even so ethnic tensions keep in or keep out local talent and enterprises are increasingly ethnic-based subject to latent racism which are seldom articulated on the level of macro-politics.
 One the other hand, indigenous languages are rapidly losing their appeal as governments reintroduce English to assist the youth compete in a global environment. In a sense, ethnic prejudice and racism has no place in a global work environment but even if English or other Asian languages are preferred, there is still a preference in Asia to hire those who are socially or culturally familiar. In a diversified talent market, there may be little need to hire the “adversary”, the talented worker from a different community which is politically powerful or politically weak. If politically powerful, they may be useful as ‘go-betweens”, “agents” or “brokers” to negotiate with ruling politicians but their usefulness stops abruptly there. Yet some Asian languages like Chinese and Japanese are popular because they are the performing languages of the Asian business environment while others like Malay, Singhalese or Vietnamese are unable to provide similar attractive returns. These issues require further study for globalisation also requires regional specialisation and knowledge of local and regional cultural resources contribute to the enrichment of human capital but how prepared are employers to take on the task of cultural enrichment when they are in a powerful position to punish or degrade employees who represent communities of the most or least powerful.
The politics of globalisation is also defined by global interests of the developed world which provide ideas of global security according to the ideational systems of capitalism and liberalism. Critics of these systems are generally labeled as “anarchists” or “anti-global”. Hence standards of global morality are based on support or opposition to economic globalisation and have developed a universal relevance which is directly linked to global security. Global media reflects the line of thinking of political leaders of the developed world and   critiques of economic globalisation by leaders of the developed and least developed world are seldom represented in global media except when they endorse the views of leaders of superpowers or in the case of ‘rogue’ nations to oppose them. Global politics contains clear lines of conflict and opposition between nations and intellectual communities which agree to conventional rules of political wisdom of economic globalisation and those which do not and this is for the most determined by other rules of geopolitical interests which further divide the globe into allies and adversaries.  The rise of religious fundamentalism in the politics of superpowers is debated as if it could be an emerging line of thinking in political secularism yet religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world is clearly reviewed as a dangerous trend against the global peace process. It is unfortunate that political autonomy in the Muslim world has become associated with militant fundamentalism, the last and final phase in the principle of jihad .Secularism is a coded global standard for modern capitalist democracies but is increasingly an issue of debate.
 In the Asia-Pacific where religions are increasingly dividing ethnic communities, causing political instability in plural nations, religious organisations have been remobilised into non-governmental organisations in the pursuit of ethnic or ideological interests .These are contradictory to  and obstruct the development of local civil society movements which then fail to advance into a neutral global civil movement. This has exacerbated the development of universal values of transparency and trust and has made people suspect the work and activities of non-governmental organisations which are neutral. The rise of sectarian conflict in the Asia-Pacific , the rising disillusionment against States which are unable to deliver tangible economic and political goods and services and the increasing malaise of youth in search of rewards without  effort have made it increasingly difficult for developing nations to abide by standards of global competitiveness set by advanced nations. Border conflicts and the increasing precarious position of ‘border-net communities’ have also distracted people from participating in more challenging activities of  life while the vulnerability of indigenous languages undergoing endangerment and language death have reactivated debates on indigenous and national heritage. The rights of indigenous minorities are increasingly threatened as their relative underdevelopment calls for greater economic integration and main-streaming. This obsession to ‘develop’ indigenous people to achieve a better quality of life is disputed not only by minorities but by conservationists who argue that development strategies are seldom sustainable and deprive indigenous people of their rights of access to land and other natural resources. Indigenous people continue to provide evidence of anti-global trends which developing countries are anxious to play down. A review of the  position of indigenous people of  the advanced West reveal a pathetic status of diminishing plurality and diversity against a grey cloud of loss histories . The poverty of indigenous people in the advanced West, Asia-Pacific and Africa is the only unifying factor which has achieved a global epidemical scale.
Finally there are other kinds of borders which are harder to probe-the borders of minds which contain thoughts and emotions which harbour centuries of prejudice and hatred or mistrust for movements of reform. Psychological and emotional barriers are part of the deep structures of human cognition which find solutions in simple dichotomies of things right and wrong in human society but because they are patterned by essentialist and primordial ideas of morality, the subjective experience overweighs the act of logic and reason. Indeed it even seems reasonable to guide current policy and action on the basis of medieval history or mythical culture which contradicts the essence of the formation of the modern state or the modern global state. The idea of ‘rights of origin” to define borders of political exclusivity contradicts the notion of borderless citizenry and exacerbates conflict over land and resources. Human rights is a reference to loss of freedom and liberty over personal, political and cultural resources yet very few have challenged the rhetoric of whose rights it is which  are  being championed  and whose are being disfavoured.