Globalization and Citizenship

Globalization creates new opportunities for co-operation on an international scale at the same time as it poses extraordinary challenges to established forms of solidarity and social protection. Can the polarizing, disintegrating effects of globalization be offset through new approaches, developed at an international level, that reaffirm the basic political, social and economic rights of all people? This has been a problem at the centre of national debates on citizenship. What are the institutional and political requisites for strengthening basic mechanisms of social solidarity at the international level? How can the rapid and virtually unrestrained expansion of world markets be tempered through commitment to some forms of redistribution on a global scale? How can people everywhere co-operate effectively to assert and defend certain basic human rights? The very practical issues raised by apparently idealistic questions like these lie at the heart of efforts to implement the Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development, were considered in UNRISD work on this subject.

Project carried out with Swinburne University of Technology and a consortium of Australian Universities.