Globalisation case studies

Question 1

How did EasyJet start off?

Answer 1

• Founded in 1995
• Flights from London to Glasgow cost £29
• 1996, flights to Barcelona became available

Question 2

What is EasyJet like now?

Answer 2

• Now has around 300 flight routes
• 65 million passengers in 2014 from 30
  thousand in 1995
• Own 200 aeroplanes in 2014
• £4 billion in income in 2014

Question 3

What is the EU?

Answer 3

• Trade bloc of 27 European countries
• Has its own currency the Euro

Question 4

What benefits do members of the EU gain?

Answer 4

• Member countries gain access to funds to help develop
• Farmers subsidised through the Common Agriculture Policy
• Award titles such as ‘capital of culture’ to attract global attention
• Right of free movement across borders when Schengen agreemnt removed borders.

Question 5

What is ASEAN?

Answer 5

• Association of South East Asian Nations
• Ten member states
• Population of 600 million people
• Founded in 1967
• Include HICs like Singapore and NEEs like Indonesia

Question 6

What benefits do members of ASEAN gain?

Answer 6

• Worked to eliminate taroffs to encourage free trade
• Enlarged ASEAN market improved Indonesia’s secondary economy
• The development of the ASEAN economic community will allow free labour and capital movement across borders.
• Members have pledged to not have nuclear weapons

Question 7

What is China’s open door policy?

Answer 7

• Pre 1978, China was underdeveloped due to Mao Zedong, many died in famine and lived in poverty.
• Open door policy, 1978 opened by Deng Xiaoping embraced globalisation while also remaining a dictatorship

Question 8

What were the social impacts of the open door policy?

Answer 8

• Biggest migration in history took place
• One child policy
• 300 million people left rural areas in search of better jobs
• 200 Chinese cities with 1 million inhabitants

Question 9

What were the economic impacts of the open door policy?

Answer 9

• China named the workshop of the world
• The largest TNCs began to branch out into SEZs such as Yangtze and Shanghai
• 1990’s 50% of China’s GDP is being produced in the SEZs
• 2015, average worker earns $40 or more a day
• 400 million people escaping poverty since reforms began

Question 10

Which parts of China are still ‘closed’?

Answer 10

• Google and Facebook have no access to China’s market
• 34 films to be screened every year
• ## Strict controls on TNCs such as blocking foreign acquisition of Huiyan juice by Coca Cola

Question 11

Which parts of China are more open to globalisation?

Answer 11

• FDI in China is valued at $1.25 trillion between 2015 and 2025
• Agreed to export rare Earth materials after pressure from the WTO
• Foreign TNCs allowed to invest in China’s domestic markets.

Question 12

What is a switched off place and an example?

Answer 12

• An area against globalisation and for censorship.
• South Korea is an autocracy run by one family (switched off by choice)
• The Sahel (switched off against its will)

Question 13

What makes Korea a switched off place?

Answer 13

• Citizens do not have access to the internet or social media
• No undersea data cables linking Korea and other countries
• South Korea is a developed country home to places such as Samsung and it completely juxtaposed to its North counterpart

Question 14

What makes the Sahel a switched off place?

Answer 14

• The Sahel region contains countries such as Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso which are some of the world’s poorest countries.
• Was colonised meaning many natural resources were stolen
• Lacks a coastline
• Extreme environmental conditions meaning cost of extra infrastructure
• Due to poverty there is no market meaning it is not attractive to TNCs

Question 15

Why do people outsource services to India?

Answer 15

• India has a big English speaking population due to colonialism
• Broadband capacity is unusually high in Bangalore thanks to early investment in the 1980’s meaning many call centres are built here

Question 16

What are the positives of services being outsourced to India?

Answer 16

• Call centre workers earn Indian middle class wages
• Outsourcing companies became profitable, Infosys earning $9 billion a year in 2015

Question 17

What are the negatives of services being outsourced to India?

Answer 17

• Call centre workers being exploited
• Work can be highly repetitive and due to time differences work has to be conducted at night
• Gap between rich and poor has widened, India has more billionaires than the UK but more people living in poverty than all of Africa. 2015 half a billion Indians lacked toilet

Question 18

What are the positives of outsourcing manufacturing to India?

Answer 18

• Extreme poverty in China fell from 60% in 1990 to 16% in 2005
• Between 2010 and 2015 disposable income rose threefold
• 2010 workers walked off of production lines resulting in a wage increase of 30 to 65% a month

Question 19

What are the negatives of outsourcing labour to China?

Answer 19

• China gained reputation as the workshop of the world but this resulted in mass sweatshop activity, 2500 workers in Yongkang lost limb or finger a year.
• China dubbed ‘airpocalypse’ by western media
• Air pollution in cities reducing life expentancy by 5 years.
• Less desirable sweatshop labour has migrated to Bangladesh due to high tech production.

Question 20

What are the impacts of rural to urban migration in Mumbai?

Answer 20

• 2015, home to more than 22 million, doubled in size since 1970 due to rural poverty in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
• Urban employment covers all sectors due to varying levels of socioeconomic backgrounds
• Rich people such as bollywood actors drive up house prices causing contrasting slum areas such as Dharavi where rent is as low as £2.20 a day,

Question 21

What is life like in the Dharavi slum?

Answer 21

• Home to 1 million people
• Rent is as low as £2.20 a day,
• Also heavily polluted due to recycling industry
• Many diseases and sanitation problems in the slum
• Sewer pipes next to broken water pipes meaning people can be showered in sewage.

Question 22

What caused a population increase in Karachi?

Answer 22

• Karachi is the second most populous city in the world with 24 million people living there in 2015
• Karachi is the finance centre of Pakistan and attracts lots of internal migration
• Is a famous uni city and produces many skilled graduates making it attractive to media and software companies.

Question 23

What are some examples of low wage internal migration?

Answer 23

Indian workers moving to the UAE - over 2m making up 30% of the population, estimated $15 billion in remittances to India. Most migrants work in construction, manufacturing and transport.

Filipino workers moving to Saudi Arabia - 1.5 million migrants from the Philippines
arrived in Saudi since 1973. Some work in construction and transport but others as doctors and nurses. $7 billion in remittances. Reported ill treatment of workers

Question 24

What is an example of cultural change affecting a place?

Answer 24

• Asian diets are traditionally made up of low meat and high vegetables
• During the 1990’s China’s per capita meat consumption increased tenfold
• This has led to more cattle being farmed in China producing more methane and parts of the Amazon being chopped down to grow soya to feed Chinese cattle
• Shark fin soup is traditionally eaten at weddings by those who could afford it but now since more people are escaping poverty demand for sharks has risen.

Question 25

What is an example of cultural erosion being harmful?

Answer 25

• Amazonians and New Guineans are being culturally eroded despite being completely isolated from the rest of the world.
• They used to wear very little clothing but now wear westernised clothing such as football jerseys
• They leave their thatched houses to move into wood, concrete and corrugated iron houses.
• They no longer value ecosystems and instead want goals such as education and healthcare driving them to hunt endangered animals to sell or to eat such as the the Peruvian Jaguar

Question 26

What is an example of the positive influence of global culture?

Answer 26

• The paralympics was viewed 20 million times in the 2020 Tokyo games
• 1983-92 being dubbed the decade of the disabled people
• Used to be victims of sterilisation

Question 27

What are some examples of countries resisting cultural change due to globalisation?

Answer 27

France - Extremely supportive of French film makers to push the language and even subsidises them, under content law 40% of all TV must be French production

Great Firewall of China - Prevents users from using Facebook or the BBC. Strict quota of 34 foreign films a year but people still celebrate Christmas in China showing Western culture is prominent

Nigeria - Environmentalist groups against oil companies because of the damaage they cause. One writer was executed for speaking against this in 1995

Question 28

What are some examples of globalisation leading to extremism in Europe?

Answer 28

• Nationalist parties in European countries becoming more popular such as the France’s front national party who retained 25% of votes in 2014., who reject immigration and openly embrace fascism
• UK’s British national party openly opposed post colonial immigrants
• The murder of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham was a result of racial tensions
• Charlie Hebdo office bombings by Islamic extremists and execution of staff were murdered due to cultural tensions, France 2015

Question 29

What are some examples of internet censorship?

Answer 29

• Communist party ruled China for 70 years
• 1988 Tiananmen massacre was a violent put down of student protests by police. Google withdrew from China when China demanded the information covering the incident should be censored
• The great firewall of China restricts youtube, twitter and facebook
• Youku Tudou is used by 400 million people instead.
• North Koreans have no access to the internet due to state restrictions

Question 30

What are some examples of migration controls in the UK?

Answer 30

• 2010, UK introduced a 5 point system to ensure economic migrants possess the necessary skills to enter the UK
• Tier one migrants ,ust be willing to invest £2 million into the UK or possess exceptional talent but this didn’t apply to EU migrants but we left the EU in 2020
• UK failed to meet 2010 goal of 100,000 net migrants because fewer British people emigrated, government had no control over economic EU migrants and refugees were allowed to remain in the UK under human rights law.

Question 31

What are Canada’s first nations and how has globalisation impacted them?

Answer 31

• Home to 6 indigenous nations pre-dating arrival of Europeans.
• They oppose oil companies trying to ‘switch on’ their area
• Over 200 million oil barrels extracted since 1920 killing fish in oil polluted lakes and the introduction of alcohol and drugs to the young Dene people

Question 32

What is Todmorden and what does it do?

Answer 32

• A transition town focused on bottom down approach instead of relying on global trade
• The IET campaign received national lottery funding and aimed to encourage consumers and growers to work together. Created 40 public fruit and vegetable gardens and stages educational talks.

Question 33

What is the Rana Plaza collapse?

Answer 33

Fire and building safety accord in Bangladesh shows western TNCs taking more responsibility.
- It was introduced after the Rana plaza collapse in 2013 that killed 1100 textile workers
- Major cracks appeared in the building overnight but workers were sent back in to meet major deadlines.
- Many British TNCs have signed the accord since legally binding them to worker safety

Question 34

What are some examples of UK recycling schemes to combat the economic impacts caused by globalisation?

Answer 34

• Local authorities run their own recycling schemes under local agenda 21
• In 2011 Wales banned shops from giving out plastic bags for free and rose to 5p to place more value on them without influencing shops and customers.
• Northern Ireland banned it in 2013 then Scotland in 2014 and then England in 2015

Question 35

What is TRAID?

Answer 35

• A company focused on keeping clothe sin use for longer so others don’t have to produced further damaging the environment
• In 2023, TRAID has committed £24,703 to fund a new project in Matuail, Dhaka, Bangladesh in partnership with the NGO Grambangla. This project will provide education scholarships for 60 vulnerable girls to learn sewing and tailoring skills to build a life away from working as waste pickers on landfill sites.

Question 36

Where was M-Pesa first used?

Answer 36

Kenya, in 2007 launched by Safaricom.

Question 37

What are some key facts about M-Pesa?

Answer 37

In 2012 - it was used by over 17m Kenyans and as of 2022 it is now 30m

In 2012 - around 25% of the country’s gross national product flows through it

Question 38

Where has M-Pesa expanded to?

Answer 38

Kenya
India
Afghanistan
Nairobi
Tanzania

Question 39

Where is Russian immigration and what is it?

Answer 39

Russia is in Eastern Europe. Migrants are especially attracted to global hub cities, those with an unusually high density of transport, business, political and cultural connections to the world, like London, Dubai or New York

Question 40

What percentage of London house buyers were foreign in 2014?

Answer 40

In 2014, 82% of house buyers in central London were foreign. Many were from Qatar and Russia.

Question 41

Why is there such an increase in Russian migration?

Answer 41

An example is Russian oligarch billionaires (exceptionally wealthy business people) investing in property in London and living there some of the time. This happens partly so the oligarchs can easily send their children to the UK’s elite private schools, and partly to move money out of Russia and invest it in London property.

Question 42

What is the social impact of Russian migration?

Answer 42

Investors face many push factors that face them within Russia some of these are economic instability and conflict which can largely affect the business of Russia investors. London has many pull factors too including 33% of property in London is sold to Russian buyers specifically in wealthy and prestigious areas.