ABSTRACT
‘Globalisation’ is a term often used without a clear definition. In the simplest sense, it refers to growing interconnectedness over and across national borders, as the result of revolutions in communication and transportation technologies. People nowadays have easy access to information and relatively cheap transportation, and therefore the distance between places and peoples has been dramatically reduced. This phenomenon is what Harvey (1989) has called ‘time-space compression’ and all sorts of expressions have followed, such as the ‘global village’ or the ‘flat world’. To speak in Castles and Miller’s terms: ‘The global character of international migration is the way it affects more and more countries and regions, and its linkages with complex processes affecting the entire world’ (1998: 283). Moreover, some borders have been removed. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, it became possible to migrate from countries previously blocked from the West, and within the EU, border control has almost entirely disappeared. EU citizens can move unrestrained between member states, and a free internal market exists. This global ‘connectedness’ and the diminishment – if not disappearance – of borders has its impact on labour markets. For example, some companies have enjoyed a sense of being footloose as they move to places where they can produce or operate at lower costs. However, this is not a one-way process; there are also different opportunities in the types of jobs available in Western economies, attracting people from the very places where the companies move to as well. According to Sassen (2001) an informal, flexible labour market forms an inseparable part of the current official economy – and it is one of the main pull factors for immigration.
