Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Part I Development in the Global Information Economy
- Part II Software and the Celtic Tiger
- 4 “Location Nation”: Remaking Society for Foreign Investment
- 5 Indigenous Innovation and the Developmental Network State
- 6 Making Global and Local
- 7 The Class Politics of the Global Region
- Part III The Politics of the Developmental Network State
- A Appendix A: Methodology of the Study
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Class Politics of the Global Region
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Part I Development in the Global Information Economy
- Part II Software and the Celtic Tiger
- 4 “Location Nation”: Remaking Society for Foreign Investment
- 5 Indigenous Innovation and the Developmental Network State
- 6 Making Global and Local
- 7 The Class Politics of the Global Region
- Part III The Politics of the Developmental Network State
- A Appendix A: Methodology of the Study
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The “glocalization” of the software industry has created not only a new industry and new firms but also a new labor force and class relations. A rising technical–professional class has been a significant element of the shift toward a postindustrial occupational structure in Ireland, one characterized at the same time by upskilling and polarization. This technical–professional labor force is increasingly globalized – both in terms of the national origin of employees and, more significant, with regard to the extensive migration experience of many of those workers. Glocal capital meets glocal professional labor in a match made by the glocal state (Brenner, 1998, 1999). With flat organizational structures and high employee turnover, the class compromise in the software workplace is transformed. The ramifications of this compromise are felt not only among professional workers but also in the national polity as national social-partnership agreements fragment under pressure from the spiraling wages of the nonunion sector, creating a new politics of inequality in the DNS.
THE GLOBALIZATION OF SOFTWARE LABOR
Technical labor in Ireland has been internationalized almost from its inception – working in TNCs or emigration were the most likely career destinations. However, similar to the globalization of Irish software firms, one form of globalization characterized by branch-plant employment and brain drain has been at least partially transformed and upgraded into transnational technical communities linked by migration circuits and globalized workplaces.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of High Tech GrowthDevelopmental Network States in the Global Economy, pp. 127 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004