Global Cities / World Cities

As Allen J. Scott writes in Globalisation and the Rise of City-regions, “... some reconsideration of the everyday notion of citizenship is itself long overdue. An alternative definition of citizenship, one that is more fully in harmony with the unfolding new world system, would presumably assign basic political entitlements and obligations to individuals not so much as an absolute birthright, but as some function of their changing involvement and practical allegiances in given geographic contexts.”

While this sentiment makes sense to anyone (myself included) who has grappled with the visa systems of the nation states at the helm of so-called global cities, it is clear that in the decade since this article was written that, if anything, regulation of the non-citizen workforce has become increasingly strict, even polarised. The United Kingdom is an example of a nation characterised by two extremes: mobility of people on the one hand obligated by membership of the EU, and tight regulation on the other that excludes all but the most highly skilled international citizens from working in the UK. What is free movement of peoples across the EU but an extension of entitlements and obligations predicated on birth? This is a regional mobility that can hardly be viewed as global. In terms of equity, the EU allows people of all skill levels and economic means, at least theoretically, to live and work anywhere in the union. For non-EU citizens, though, such rights are only granted to those professionals at the top level of command. Thus, mobility itself is an unequal process in the context of a supposedly increasingly globalised economy. It is clear that the political agenda of nation states favours a distinctly regulationist approach over otherwise neoliberal trends when it comes to mobility of labor at a global scale.