Dynamic World Views
THEME 1: NETWORKS OF ECONOMY AND TRADE // THEME 3: VECTORS OF SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Brain Drain or Brain Gain?: Socio-political Analysis of Attitudes Around the World
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatma Esra Sagir
The issue of immigration, which has recently come to the fore with wars, has brought brain drain discussions back to the agenda along with the changing world. According to TURKSTAT statistical data, the number of people migrating abroad from Turkey increased by % 62,3 from 2022 to 2023. Another striking feature in the statistical data is that the majority of the migrating population is between the ages of 25-29. The worldwide impact of the economy has caused a significant increase in brain drain in Turkey, as in other countries. The basis on which this human flow is evaluated varies depending on the sending and receiving countries. This study evaluates the concepts of "brain drain" and "brain gain" from a socio-political perspective and to analyze the social reasons for the recent human flow in brain drain.
What Happened to Internationalism? : Doing Global Studies in the Post-Post-Cold War World
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Daniel Benson
Foundational to the field of Global Studies is what Manfred Steger has called the Global Imaginary. The global imaginary has provided the basis for bringing forth an important new scale of analysis beyond the national terrain, from global cities to religion. But the dominance of the global imaginary emerged in a very particular period of history, that of the end of the Cold War and the relatively short-lived period of unquestioned U.S. hegemony. My study seeks to answer the following question: is the global imaginary still adequate for global studies scholarship and social and political activism in the contemporary conjuncture? The increasing political, economic, and cultural clout of the rise of BRICS+ to resurgent protectionism in U.S. trade policy shows a world of multipolarity, regional alliances, new geopolitical bloc formation, and states reaffirming sovereignty over the global economy. Indeed, today’s world looks radically different than the post-Cold War one. My approach is a historical and conceptual one. I show, firstly, how the notion of internationalism was the structural imaginary to the Cold War world (1945-1991). I then show the slippage of internationalism in the post-Cold War period (1991-2008), when it was reduced to a truncated notion of the “international community” and replaced by globalization and the global imaginary in scholarly works. Finally, I make the case for a renewed internationalism as an important scale of analysis for scholarship and as an essential social imaginary for progressive social and political movements today.
Changes in the Environment and Negotiating Identity for Borderland Peoples of South East Asia: The Impact of Climate Refugees Migrating from the Delta Region to the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Farhana Hoque
The paper is an exploration of identity on the borderlands between South and Southeast Asia. After 400 years of migration to the CHT due to war and famine, a hybrid community of Buddhist refugees came to settle in the hill tracts. From the 1950s, they called themselves the Marma people. Since then, cultural standardization has been hard-wired into the architecture of the Bangladeshi state, but even so, the Marma cultural journey did not result in assimilation. On the contrary, the creation and maintenance of a unique Marma identity has largely been a political project that wields together diverse peoples under one banner and safeguards the community’s existence in a fast-moving and challenging environment. Even when the demographics of the CHT have completely changed due to the influx of landless Bangladeshi refugees, the continued encounters with forces outside the community have pushed the Marma to further differentiate themselves through inventions and inversions of tradition, and the use of material culture. For example, there are stricter marriage rules to maintain access to land, there is an acceleration of the building of Buddhist temples, and there is an intensification of ritual life. When under pressure to assimilate to the majority culture, the Marma community has instead chosen to sharpen its identity.
Power Structures and the New Global Governance: Emergent Countries and the Contemporary Challenges of the International Institutional Framework
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gabriel Rached
The multilateral institutions derived from Bretton Woods, since 2008 and especially in the last decade, have been under check denoting that the international order has reached a critical stage. This process can also be evidenced by the increasing criticism concerning the role and performance of the international institutions in force. This issue addresses to the emergent countries and their movement towards reviewing their participation in the international arena. At this point, the rise of China and the willingness of these intermediate countries (such as Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa) to revisit their insertion on global governance scope, led to the conformation of the BRICS - aiming to cooperate and reach a higher level of development accompanied by a repositioning in the international arena. In this context, what is the role of the global community to move forward and contribute to the process of designing relevant institutional guidelines to overcome contemporary demands within the international arena? Which dynamics should be revisited to face the present challenges and how do domestic politics and actors interfere in shaping global governance? These are some questions related to this study, taking into account the interests and features that affect the policy-making processes. By rethinking contemporary features of Global Governance through the International Political Economy approach - debating which kind of measures and shapes for the international organizations would be suitable and fit better the contemporary challenges for cooperation - this research debates the key features for structuring a “New Global Governance” institutional framework.
