Is There a Global Citizenship of the Excluded?

While I might not agree that we have some deeper “human,” much less spiritual connection, I think that our economic interconnection is indisputable. Strawberries from Chile come to Los Angeles, which in turn sends films to movie theaters in Chennai. Knit sweaters in Bangladesh travel to Berlin, which exports BMWs to Egypt.

But there’s a darker side to this seemingly benign free flow of goods. Put simply, the wealth of nations, like that of the United States, depends upon poverty elsewhere (the Global South). This itself is a contentious claim among those who believe the free market lifts all boats in a rising tide. However, as globalization itself comes under fire from both Left and Right, it becomes increasingly clear that neoliberalism — the radical opening of national borders to multinational capitalism — has produced a race to the bottom among producing nations.

Let’s take an example. If I have a scarf factory (I really like scarves, probably because growing up in LA I never got to wear any), it makes sense to seek out cheaper wages in Vietnam than in say, Seattle (where it is rainy and people need scarves). But should workers organize in my Vietnamese factory and demand better pay, I can up and take my scarf factory to Bangladesh, where I might not have the same problems. Their environmental rules might even be more relaxed. All the better.

Thus, global economic development seems to have an inherently destructive tendency from this perspective. Some might argue that workers (in Vietnam or in Bangladesh) now have jobs they otherwise wouldn’t. Maybe they will someday afford those scarves. I’m not convinced this makes up the damage the multinational does as it takes advantage of the race to the bottom. Furthermore, those with more protectionist beliefs might also counter that the unemployed folks in Seattle who might have worked at my factory are still out of jobs, and there’s less benefit to my home nation.

It’s this economic interconnection — and the power imbalances inherent in it — that has led me to think globally.

No event in my life was more impactful in this regard than my travels to Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras between 2006 and 2013. While I had always had a sense that what the U.S. did impacted people in other parts of the world — the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still going on, and I had strongly opposed them — traveling to Central America for Spanish language school allowed me to meet people who saw world history differently than most people in my country.

So why had the U.S. supported this government, not to mention similar governments in Nicaragua, Chile, and Iran (before 1979)? This goes back to my main insight. Just as business interests seek a race to the bottom, governments often seek positive economic environments — regardless of the political freedoms a nation has. It is easy to condemn Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, but far more difficult to stop buying their oil. Not only then were the governments in Iran and Guatemala (both installed by American-supported coups in the fifties) more open for American business interests, but they supported its position in the Cold War. I was beginning to see that the material lives of people “there,” including their lack of political freedom, were directly shaped by economics and policy “here.”

To be a global citizen then means not simply a well-intentioned feeling of mutual humanity (even if hearing Cindy Lauper and Bruce Springsteen in the same song is pretty great). It means thinking of each political decision — including that of our home nations — from the perspective of those who would be most impacted by them abroad. Thinking of the world from the underworld. From those who feel: We are NOT the world.

Can there be global citizenship based on the needs of even the most destitute and excluded? That’s a question for the coming decades.

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