Saskia Sassen: University of Chicago Chicago, USA
 
THE GLOBAL CITY: STRATEGIC SITE/NEW FRONTIER (Page 5)
 
THE LOCALIZATIONS OF THE GLOBAL
 
Economic globalization, then, needs to be understood also in its multiple localizations, rather than only in terms of the broad, overarching macro level processes that dominate the mainstream account. Further, we need to see that some of these localizations do not generally get coded as having anything to do with the global economy. The global city can be seen as one strategic instantiation of such multiple localizations.
 
Here I want to focus on localizations of the global which are marked by those two features. Many of these localizations are embedded in the demographic transition evident in such cities, where a majority of resident workers are today immigrants and women, often women of color. These cities are seeing an expansion of low-wage jobs that do not fit the master images about globalization yet are part of it. Their embeddedness in the demographic transition evident in all these cities, and their consequent invisibility, contribute to the devalorization of these types of workers and work cultures and to the "legitimacy" of that devalorization.
 
This can be read as a rupture of the traditional dynamic whereby membership in leading economic sectors contributes conditions towards the formation of a labor aristocracy--a process long evident in western industrialized economies. "Women and immmigrants" come to replace the Fordist/family wage category of "women and children"(Sassen 1998: chapter 5). One of the localizations of the dynamics of globalization is the process of economic restructuring in global cities. The associated socio-economic polarisation has generated a large growth in the demand for low-wage workers and for jobs that offer few advancement possibilities. This, amidst an explosion in the wealth and power concentrated in these cities -- that is to say, in conditions where there is also a visible expansion in high-income jobs and high-priced urban space.
 
"Women and immigrants" emerge as the labor supply that facilitates the imposition of low-wages and powerlessness under conditions of high-demand for those workers and the location of those jobs in high-growth sectors. It breaks the historic nexus that would have led to empowering workers and legitimates this break culturally.
 
Another localization which is rarely associated with globalization, informalization, re-introduces the community and the household as an important economic space in global cities. I see informalization in this setting as the low-cost (and often feminized) equivalent of deregulation at the top of the system. As with deregulation (e.g. as in financial deregulation), informalization introduces flexibility, reduces the "burdens" of regulation, and lowers costs, in this case especially the costs of labor. Informalization in major cities of highly developed countries--whether new York, London, paris or Berlin-- can be seen as a downgrading of a variety of activities for which there is an effective demand in these cities-- but also a devaluing and enormous competition given low entry costs and few alternative forms of employment. Going informal is one way of producing and distributing goods and services at a lower cost and with greater flexibility. This further devalues these types of activities. Immigrants and women are important actors in the new informal economies of these cities. They absorb the costs of informalizing these activities.(See Sassen 1998: chapter 8).
 

The reconfiguration of economic spaces associated with globalization in major cities has had differential impacts on women and men, on male-typed and female-typed work cultures, on male and female centered forms of power and empowerment. The restructuring of the labor market brings with it a shift of labor market functions to the household or community. Women and households emerge as sites that should be part of the theorization of the particular forms that these elements in labor market dynamics assume today.

 
These transformations contain possibilities, even if limited, for women's autonomy and empowerment. For instance, we might ask whether the growth of informalization in advanced urban economies reconfigures some types of economic relations between men and women? With informalization, the neighborhood and the household re-emerge as sites for economic activity. This condition has its own dynamic possibilities for women. Economic downgrading through informalization, creates "opportunities" for low-income women entrepreneurs and workers, and therewith reconfigures some of the work and household hierarchies that women find themselves in. This becomes particularly clear in the case of immigrant women who come from countries with rather traditional male-centered cultures.
 
There is a large literature showing that immigrant women's regular wage work and improved access to other public realms has an impact on their gender relations. Women gain greater personal autonomy and independence while men lose ground Women gain more control over budgeting and other domestic decisions, and greater leverage in requesting help from men in domestic chores. Also, their access to public services and other public resources gives them a chance to become incorporated in the mainstream society--they are often the ones in the housheold who mediate in this process. It is likely that some women benefit more than others from these circumstances; we need more research to establish the impact of class, education, and income on these gendered outcomes. Besides the relatively greater empowerment of women in the household associated with waged employment, there is a second important outcome: their greater participation in the public sphere and their possible emergence as public actors. There are two arenas where immigrant women are active: institutions for public and private assistance, and the immigrant/ethnic community. The incorporation of women in the migration process strengthens the settlement likelihood and contributes to greater immigrant participation in their communities and vis a vis the state. For instance, Hondagneu-Sotelo (1995) found immigrant women come to assume more active public and social roles which further reinforces their status in the household and the settlement process. Women are more active in community building and community activism and they are positioned differently from men regarding the broader economy and the state. They are the ones that are likely to have to handle the legal vulnerability of their families in the process of seeking public and social services for their families This greater participation by women suggests the possibility that they may emerge as more forceful and visible actors and make their role in the labor market more visible as well.
 
There is, to some extent, a joining of two different dynamics in the condition of women in global cities described above. On the one hand they are constituted as an invisible and disempowered class of workers in the service of the strategic sectors constituting the global economy. This invisibility keeps them from emerging as whatever would be the contemporary equivalent of the "labor aristocracy" of earlier forms of economic organization, when a low-wage worker' position in leading sectors had the effect of empowering that worker, i.e. the possibility of unionizing. On the other hand, the access to (albeit low) wages and salaries, the growing feminization of the job supply, and the growing feminization of business opportunities brought about with informalization, do alter the gender hierachies in which they find themselves.