Why is globalisation so controversial ?

      On Monday 8th of October 2018, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published an alarming report regarding the increase of global warming above 1,5°C.

The rising of the global warming in the public debate exemplifies the multiform questionings about the new word configuration process led by globalization.

Globalization can be defined as a process of interaction among the people, companies and governments of different nations driven by international trade and investment and helped with information technologies.In other words, the rise of exchanges of different  natures – ranging from financial flows to human migrations – shaped a situation of interdependence between the territories.

      For a lot of people globalization is nothing but the object of rejection, and protests soaring across the world should make us think about the consequencies of such changes.

Then, why is globalization so controversial ?

The first part of our study will be focusing on how globalization shaped world economy and resulted in social and economic disparities between the people. The seconde will emphasize the new aspect of today’s global firms and the consecuencies of such modification.

      There are two documents to help us better understand the problem. The document 1 is an extract of an article from «The Guardian» by Joanna Walters. It is entitled «Occupy America: protests against Wall Street and inequality hit 70 cities» and was published in October 2011

The document 2 is a caricature from Polyp’s personal website showing his prospect on globalization

      One consequence of globalization is that it drastically worsened economic and social inequalities on a global scale. As mentionned in Doc 1, the Wall Street protesters denounce both «economic inequalities» (line 1) and the inequal repartition of wealth in the US whose «40%  is held by 1% of the population» (line 6-7).

In the 1980’s neoliberals policies - led by officials such as Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher -  contributed to emphasise financial deregulation of the markets, thus increasing the part occupied by finance in the economy. Financial flows began to thrive across the world throughout the last decades. IDF were multiplied by 1.5 between 2002 and 2012, thanks to the rise of financial exchanges between territories. Thus globalization promoted thoses inequalities of wealth all across the world.

Besides, economic inequalities deepened because of lighter taxation for the wealthy, mentionned line 8, this phenomen becoming a source of discontentment and imperilling social cohesion in the US.

Furthermore globalization triggers civil anger because it led to job loss and house repossessions (line 9). The growth of financial flows and trade between countries provoked a precariousness process of the people, mostly affecting both the working and the middle classes.

After the Second World War, the level of qualification of the workers and the employees rose constantly to adapt the work realized in the more and more complex machines which equip the production apparatus. Then, it appears clear that globalization tends to counterbalance the positives effects of this trend by putting workers in a worldwide economic competition.

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