Patterns of Globalised and less Globalised Places

One way of studying patterns of globalisation is to use the KOF Index which is produced annually by The Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research.

In 2014, The Netherland, Ireland and Belgium were the world's most globalised states, according to KOF’s measurements. A complex methodology informs each report. Scores are derived from the analysis of a diverse range of data which includes ranking countries according to three core sets of indicators:

• political involvement globally
• economic involvement globally
• social involvement globally

An alternative approach to studying geographies of globalisation is to analyse world maps showing the distribution of particular kinds of globalised activity. Key findings include:

• the concentration of skilled professional occupations, including quaternary sector research and research & development work (R&D), in high-income developed countries. However, increasingly there are large numbers of skilled scientists and researchers working in emerging economies like China and India too.
• concentrations of poorly paid and dangerous manufacturing occupations in less developed countries and some of the poorer emerging economies such as Bangladesh. Some emerging economies - notably China - are developing so rapidly that poor working conditions and exploitative employment are becoming less common there already.
• pockets of poorly-paid unskilled agricultural work in rural regions of the developing world where trade terms make it difficult to obtain increasing wealth.

Key point: Some places and people can be highly globalised in certain ways yet not others. 

For instance, while China appears highly globalised in terms of its trade and employment patterns, its citizens do not participate freely in global social media and often experience only a “shallow” form of social and cultural globalisation. 

Similarly, cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast are participating in a global supply chain but may have little outside knowledge of the countries and markets where the chocolate they help create is ultimately sold.