The strategic role of labor in mexico´s subordinated integration into the u.s. production system under NAFTA

Abstract

There have been innumerable attempts to define and characterize the tendency toward accelerating internationalization (consisting of three simultaneous movements in the current era: rapidly expanding international trade, an explosive growth in international financial flows and activities, and one new element—the creation of globally integrated systems of production). This process of accelerating internationalization is sometimes understood to define “globalization”. Yet, globalization remains an elusive concept often capriciously defined and vaguely employed. Among other objectives, we seek to add some specificity to the process of accelerating internationalization through the examination of what could be considered a paradigmatic case: NAFTA, with particular reference to Mexico’s role in the transnational production system that NAFTA has created. We seek to illuminate in one important instance what has occurred as both the US and Mexico have exhibited a process of asymmetrical integration. This case analysis cannot seek to define “globalization”, least of all because it is an ideologically charged term. Nonetheless, the pathological process we explore below cannot be considered an aberration or an exception to the dynamics of internationalization (or “globalization”). Rather, we maintain, it is clearly derivative of, and a definitive negation of, the neoclassical/neoliberal percept that an indiscriminate opening between nations (or “free trade”) will generate significant mutual benefits for these nations (irrespective of their relative power, history, distinct productive apparatuses, relative level of development, etc.).