Dimensions of Globalisation

Another way of thinking about globalisation is to explore how connections between people and places have lengthened in distance, deepened and become faster over time.

For example:

Lengthened in distance over time (products and services are sourced routinely from distant places and faraway continents)

Deepened over time (a sense of feeling “globally connected” now extends into many different areas of modern life, ranging from the imported food and TV programs we consume to our use of global social media)

Become faster over time (in recent years, people have begun to talk to one another in real-time using technologies such as Skype)

Globalisation also involves people and places becoming interconnected with one another by different kinds of global flow. These include:

Capital flows

Every day, enormous flows of money pass through the world’s stock markets. Investment banks, pension funds and private citizens buy and sell shares and money in different currencies in order to make profits. In 2013, the daily volume of foreign exchange transactions reached US$5 trillion.

Labour flows

Despite the restrictions imposed by many governments, record migrations have been recorded in recent years.  Soon there will be a quarter of a billion economic migrants in the world. Some states have a special need for migrant labour. For example, Qatar is reliant on Indian construction workers.

Product flows

Flows of manufactured goods have multiplied in size in recent years, stimulated by low production costs in China and even lower-waged economies, such as Bangladesh and Vietnam. In 2015, global GDP (Gross Domestic Product) fell just short of US$80 trillion in value. Of this, around one-quarter was generated by trade flows in agricultural and industrial commodities

Service flows

By 2040, India is expected to be the second largest economy in the world and some of its economic success is attributable to the call centre services which Indian workers provide for large US and EU companies.

Information flows

The internet has brought real-time communication between distant places, allowing goods and services to be bought at the click of a button. Facebook had 1.5 billion users by 2015, each generating countless numbers of “likes” daily. On-demand TV has increased the size of information flows greatly in recent years.