ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers the ethnoscapes created by the periphery to center migrations of skilled labor; that is, it analyzes the thematics of brain drain or brain circulation in contemporary fiction. It analyses the opposite movement characteristic of the transnational human flows and cross-cultural encounters of neoliberal globalization, that of the "elect" of global capitalism moving geographically from center to periphery in acts of neocolonial tourism. The book also considers some of the more physical, localized manifestations of neoliberal globalization in the urban landscapes of the global cities that serve as corporate and financial "command centers" of the global capitalist economy. It shows how Bolaño's novel thematizes the transnational intellectual exchanges central to Appadurai's ideoscapes and narrativizes how poor women of color have come to serve as the highly disposable laboring base of global commodity production.
