International Sociology

The breakdown of modernity has brought into question the future of world development. Structural changes in the West, the disintegration of socialist governments and the rise of the East Asian economies suggest the need for a serious rethinking of this question. Development can no longer be conceptualized as a hierarchy of three worlds but as a dynamic interplay of global capital, instrumental rationality and traditional values. Each of these concerns has functioned as a vital component of the old modernization paradigm, but must now be re-evaluated in the context of a new configuration of social and cultural relations. The redefinition of Confucianism in Asian development suggests important changes in the Western perception of Asian cultural values. Indeed, these changes imply the emergence of a new Orientalism that could reshape the meaning of world development.

The economic growth in Pacific Asia is a result of the integration of various countries into the global economy. This integration is however disproportionate, impacting on major cities rather than intermediate cities and rural areas. The result is that as metropolitan economies expand, new migrants and foreign workers add to an urban cultural mosaic that is already complicated by new gender and class divisions. While urban societies in Pacific Asia have varying configurations, broad features can be discerned. One key force is the growing middle class and the new urban and suburban landscape of consumption, which coexist amidst the neighbourhoods of the urban proletariat and the squalor of the urban poor. The social and economic diversity implies new challenges for governments which have to balance growing urban aspirations against the interests of larger society as they walk the tightrope between harnessing the rewards of economic integration and attempting to shield society from the inequalities and instabilities created by the capitalist global economy.

Two city-states in Asia, Hong Kong and Singapore, are discussed as historical illustrations of different roles played by the state in the process of economic development and globalization. The analytical comparison is guided by a proposed set of five dimensions of the global city: the economic, political, administrative, socio-cultural and physical dimensions. The findings from the comparative analysis supported three assumptions: that the most realistic alternative for the economic development of the city-state is globalization; that state intervention is an important but not always a determining factor in the process of globalization of the city-state; and that the political dimension helps to explain the different paths toward globalization taken by Singapore and Hong Kong before the latter's transition into China's Special Administrative Region.

This article utilizes the perspective of transnationalism to explain Chinese capitalist migration from the Asian Pacific to Canada in the context of globalization. It is argued that transnationalism, and particularly the process of transmigration, provides a new and useful way of theorizing the international migration of capitalists. The focus is on Chinese migrants who enter Canada under the auspices of the Canadian Business Immigration Program as investors and entrepreneurs. The article presents two levels of analysis in theorizing this transnational migration. At the macro level, this migration is explained in the context of global capitalism and capital accumulation. Statistical data are presented illustrating the participation of Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan in the programme. These data include a trend analysis of the number of transmigrants and the amount of capital brought to Canada. At the micro level, some transnational social fields are examined utilizing survey research data from interviews with 284 Chinese business migrants who have set up a residence and a business in the city of Vancouver in Canada. More specifically, preliminary evidence of transnational social fields is presented and includes: family and personal social fields, ethnic social fields and business fields.

Since 1991 Korea has experienced a large influx of foreign workers. The number of foreign workers in Korea in 1992 was 100,000 but has grown to 160,000 in 1996. Most of them are Korean-Chinese, Filipino, Bangladeshis and other Asian workers. While the Korean-Chinese tend to work in the construction, service and manufacturing industries, other Asians are concentrated in manufacturing.

The Korean government has utilized trainee programs since 1992. About 10,000 Asian workers came to Korea under this program in 1992, and there were about 57,000 trainees in Korea in June 1996. However, the trainee program produced problems: the trainees tended to become undocumented workers due to wage differentials, and the trainees were not protected by the Labor Standard Law because they were not classified as laborers.

Pointing out the problems of the trainee program in particular and the employment of foreign workers in general, this article suggests that: first, the employment of foreign workers should be minimized until the Korean labor market can promote skill advancement for local production workers, prevent local female workers from leaving the labor market, and utilize more of the potential Korean work force, such as married women, older and disabled people; and, second, in order to minimize the number of foreign illegal workers, the trainee program should be changed to a well-defined contract worker program.