Global series: Globalisation Under Pressure

The rise in nationalism. Brexit and Trump. Reactionary far-right parties wooing millions of voters around the world. The facts on the ground are clear: globalisation – and the international economic and political system that has underpinned it for the past half-century – is fracturing.

Globalisation Under Pressure is a new series from The Conversation Global that both analyses the old international order and surfaces local stories of finance, migration, jobs, education and culture that show the far-reaching impacts of the changes underway today.

These Swedish economists foresaw the globalisation backlash

Can a 90-year-old insight into the distributive effects of free trade help us mitigate the downsides of globalisation?

Angola’s ‘suitcase traders’ sell Brazilian trends, and dreams too

An Angolan importer buying Havaianas in the market of Brás, São Paulo, Brazil. Léa Barreau Tran, Author provided, Author provided

Brazilian soap operas are wildly popular in Portuguese-speaking Angola, influencing style and creating a business opportunity for thousands of Angolan female entrepreneurs who travel the world to bring fashion back in their luggage.

Our 24/7 economy and the wealth of nations

Ever more people are stuck with shift work in a globalised economy that operates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

China can help us rethink our response to deadly pandemics

The ancient Greeks were the first to use the word pandemic, but not in the modern sense of a global disease outbreak. Dedden /Wikimedia

Pandemics are global threat, but not everyone prepares for them in the same way.

The road to the great regression

War, Ford, fascism, Reaganomics, the pink tide, the EU, debt crises, rights-based activism, a fierce backlash… none of this is new. Wikimedia

We may think of current reactionary politics as radical and new, but unchecked mercantilism has always ended with a fierce backlash from both left and right. Here’s what history tells us about today.