Globalization influence on minorities.

Costescu, Mihai-Radu ; Costescu, Mihai-Alexandru

The integration of economic, political, and cultural systems has been one of the major global trends at the end of the 20th century. Advances in information technology and transportation have dramatically expanded economic, political and cultural interaction among actors all over the place. This process, called globalization, is indeed not a new phenolmenon, but its scale and pace have considerably increased since the 1980s driven by the internet revolution and major progress in transportation and logistics, namely containerized cargo and roll-on-roll-off cargo ships. These developments have led to dramatically falling transport-tation and communication costs and brought the world's markets and cultures closer together than ever.

Globalization is also characterized by institutional and political reforms in many countries, just to mention gradual trade liberalization and international coordination of policies. The reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade, bilateral trade agreements and--very much indeed--European integration and the fall of the iron curtain have been additional drivers of the massive growth in world trade.

The growth in worldwide trade has picked up speed in the 1980s and has by far exceeded output growth in the last 20 years. While the world's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 150 percent from 1980 to 2005, the volume of worldwide trade more than quadruplicated in that period.

The process of globalization has acelerated even further in the late 1990s due to the integration of major developing countries into the world's markets. The impressive growth of the economies in China and India has already attracted much attention and has had a huge impact on international markets, already. However, it is fair to say that globalization has just started and will most probably become much stronger in scale and scope.

We will now refer to the European Union (EU), where, ever since March 2000, the EU council, at Lisbon, decided that changes influencing global economy are a positive and dynamic way to reach the goal of full usage of labour. At Lisbon new objectives were adopted for the EU, regarding the creation of the most competitive economical system in the world, capable of a high rate of economic growth, in order to lead to creating of more and better work places and to an increased social cohesion.

These objectives rely on the European social pattern. Reliance on this pattern and on its influence on economic progress does not necessary mean the EU has an easier task. The European social pattern needs to be improved for:

--meeting the requirements of globalization and transition to a science-based economy and society;

--the fulfilment of social and demographic changes;

--meeting the economic and social life expectations of EU citizens.

Placing population in the center of EU policies is the key to success for these actions. This means an adequate strategy oriented to increased participation of all EU citizens to the economic and social life.

Education with long term effects, improved skills and people mobility at all levels, similar working conditions for public and private sectors, all these are important requiremts for creating an European labour market open to everyone, for a better work quality and a stronger social cohesion.

Without important investments in perfectioning quality on labour market, it will be hard to complete the Lisbon objectives and there is also the risc of increased tension on the labour market, as a result of a growing difference between the income of those with higher qualification and those with low or no qualification.

But this will not happen if the EU programmes will not adress the whole population--this is a fact that was proved by the experience many Member States had. Still, this means serious efforts, both economic and social.

As sweeping changes have taken place in the world's economies in recent decades, they have reshaped the structure of employment on a global scale. National economies are now more integrated into the global system than at any other point in the recent past. The volume of international trade and the magnitude of crossborder capital flows have reached historically high levels. Advances in communications and transport technologies have led to the establishment of complex international production networks, with developing countries producing an unprecedented level of manufactured exports within global supply chains. Fundamental shifts in economic policies have accompanied the process of globalization. These policies have emphasized maintaining low rates of inflation, liberalizing markets, reducing the scope of the public sector and encouraging cross-border flows of goods, services and finance, but not labour.

It is commonplace these days to assert that globalization provides enormous challenges as well as opportunities. This observation is particularly relevant as regards employment. The era of global integration has been associated with far-reaching changes in the structure of employment, including pressures for increased flexibility, episodes of Jobless growth," growing informalization and casualization, expanding opportunities for the highly skilled, but vanishing opportunities for the less skilled. New employment opportunities have been created in many developing countries due to the expansion of globally-oriented production, helping to reduce poverty and raise incomes. However, contradictions abound. Many of the new employment opportunities are precarious, and the size of the "working poor" population remains staggering.

Employment is the primary channel through which the majority of the population can share in the benefits of economic growth. In particular, employment plays a critical role in ensuring that economic growth translates into poverty reduction.

The latest "Employment in Europe 2007" report edition, one of the most important means of the EU Comission in helping Member States in analyzing, formulating and implementing policies for labour market, offers a realistic image of the achievements in this domain, as well as an analytical analysis of the way these policies are applied. Based on the most recent data and a realistic analysis, the report is the start up point for future discussions and implementation of national or EU policies.

EU has irreversibly started the journey to creating a science-based economy, to creating more work places, reducing unemployment and increasing labour quality. Results obtained in the EU and in Member States show how the EU strategy for labour market has lead to 3 major domains that were adressed:

* increasing employment;

* implementing structural reforms and labour market modernization;

* completing social changes.

Economic growth is crucial. EU productivity has constantly raised by 2% per year in the last 30 years, which lead to a double increase in life standards for the last 40 years. But this means the future growth has to be kept in the same limits, in order to maintain the employment rate.

Here is where we can see how European countries depend on eachother. As a consequence, trade among Member States must be given a greater importance than trade with the rest of the world. Interdependence existing among Member States can become a power factor, but it is important that it will be used in a positive way.

Social, economic and labour market policies are requirements, well-defined and easy to apply for the populaion--this is even more important as EURO was introduced or is to be introduced in the following years in all EU countries--and, at the same time, policies based on strategical and political previsions. The complete labor usage in a science-based economy can only be achieved through a realistic plan of economic, productivity and life standard growth.

An interesting situation was met with the Eastern enlargements of the EU in 2004 (ten states) and 2007 (two more). At that time, offensive managers placed priority on getting access to labour (especially skilled labour) from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Defensive managers have focused on walling off "deep" Eastern Europe from CEE and erecting mobility barriers against NMS workers. Initially, it seemed as if the primary management would involve the Commission walking the CEE states through a welter of well-established (if patchwork) regulations regarding free movement of persons, which had become a core principle for the single market in both theory and deed by the 1990s. But technocratic debate over mutual recognition of things like professional certificates was soon swamped in the late 1990s by the high politics of Member States. Germany and Austria, in particular, raised strong objections to immediate free movement of CEE workers, and the EU was ultimately obliged to negotiate the right of individual OMS to limit entry for up to seven years after membership. Here, one could say the Commission was an unsuccessful advocate for offensive management. The EU also had substantial influence over the CEE states' efforts to control their own external borders to the East. Here, they largely shared the defensive position of the Member States. Though the EU had little experience in guiding the development of external border policies--traditionally the domain of the nation state--there is good evidence that they pushed CEE states to seal those borders in a variety of ways.

Now it is a good opportunity to talk about the Equal Economic Opportunities Programme that aims at advancing ECMI's (European Centre for Minority Issues) expertise on issues relating to the participation of minorities in economic life. Specifically the programme has two goals: first to advance theoretical understandding of economic inclusion/exclusion of minorities, and then to provide practical advice to national governments and other relevant policy-making bodies on how to devise policies to combat the problem of economic marginalisation.

Minorities' ability to participate in economic life is strongly affected by the context in which they live. This context refers to a number of different situational variables including:

1. the extent to which minorities are dispersed across the territory of the state or are geographically concentrated;

2. the location of minorities, e.g. in the capital city, in deprived urban regions or in the rural periphery;

3. the presence or absence of a kin-state and the relationship of the host state therewith;

4. general socio-economic processes that are taking place in the country or region concerned, such as privatization or rapid integration into the global economy.

Minority participation in economic life is also dependent on quite often localized informal institutions, such as the existence of (often mono-ethnic) economic networks, as well as minorities' own expectations of their 'place' within society. ECMI's ability to provide advice on the issue of economic participation is therefore dependent on its understanding of these different contexts and of how certain policies may affect minorities in different ways in different contextual settings. For this reason, it is necessary first to conduct research in order to devise a methodology on how to deal with the problem of economic participation and then to think about how to apply that methodology.

While equal opportunities for minorities has long been a focus of concern within the field of human rights, little work has been carried out on how to promote equal economic opportunities for members of minorities, despite a few declarative statements in a number of legal instruments that are intended to protect members of national minorities from economic discrimination. Similarly, although social exclusion in general (with which economic exclusion is often associated) has been a focus of EU policy-making since the launch of the so-called Lisbon Strategy in 2000, few attempts have been made to shed light on the link between social and economic exclusion on the one hand, and ethnicity on the other.

Thus, we can say that, even if EU managed to obtain a high performance level in incrasing employment, there still are major objectives to be achieved:

* reducing the differencied between the main population of a country and it's minorities, if we are to talk about employment or active population;

* full employment in EU by promoting labour market integration to all persons, particularly to older persons, nationality not being a criteria;

* reducing unemployment and, most of all, reducing young people unemployment;

* increasing regional and social cohesion.

Economical and social pregress needs the european social pattern to be improved and to include the "reality" of central and east european countries. At the same time, we must not forget that the last countries that became EU members, in 2004 and 2007, came with important labour market problems which lead to the necessity, at least for the next years, to supervise their evolution. Free labour mobility, one of the central elements of an economical and social integration, is not, as proven by todays realities, only a factor for economical growth, but also a potential disturbance element for certain social problems. In my opinion, I think it is important for the EU to carefuly observe this situation and to try to control the social and economical exclusion of minorities, so that all the European objectives to have the possibility to be met without severe perturbations.

Bibliography:

(1.) J. Heintz, Globalization, economic policy and employment: poverty and gender implications, Geneva, International Labour Office, 2006.

(2.) W. Jacoby, EU enlargement: managing globalization by managing Central and Eastern Europe, Brigham Young University, 2007.

(3.) G. Pehnelt, Globalization and inflation in OECD countries, Jena Economic Research, 2007.

(4.) Fred W. Riggs, Globalization, ethnic diversity and nationalism: the challenge for democracies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2002.

(5.) EU Policy Paper, Minorities and the EU: Human Rights, Regional Development and Beyond, Evangelia Psychogiopoulou, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy.