Institution: Johns Hopkins University Principal Investigator: Beverly Silver Co-Principal Investigator: Nicole Aschoff
A recurrent theme expressed in academia, policy circles and the popular media is that globalization has a 'devastating and inescapable' impact on high-wage manufacturing jobs. Scholars argue that manufacturing jobs are moving to low-wage sites at breakneck speed, leaving behind a wasteland of joblessness and insecurity in countries like the U.S. Yet, the case of the global auto industry belies this stark picture. Automobile manufacturers are both moving into and out of high wage countries. In particular, foreign auto firms are investing heavily in the U.S. where wages are among the highest in the world. What explains this anomalous pattern of job movement in the auto industry? Why are companies continuing to build and expand plants in the U.S. despite the close proximity of low wage sites like Mexico? This dissertation will address these questions through a detailed study of capital mobility in the U.S. auto industry. Drawing on research in historical sociology, labor, geography and political economy of the world system, this dissertation will produce a detailed picture of the overall pattern of automobile job movement into and out of the U.S. over the past three decades, and provide the most plausible explanation for the pattern uncovered. The project will utilize a mixed-methods approach that includes the construction of a time-series database that tracks plant movement into and out of the U.S. since 1970, and the completion of two extended case studies of automotive component manufacturers.
The findings of this research will be of interest to sociologists, and to workers and policy makers in both developed and developing countries for three main reasons: First, the project will provide much needed empirical evidence for evaluating current debates amongst social scientists studying job movement, globalization and labor movements. Second, it will provide a conceptually grounded framework for analyzing job movement; this framework challenges the primacy of wages and labor costs in determining where jobs move by considering the complex interaction of local, national and global factors in shaping the geographical trajectories of auto firms. As a result, the dissertation will help automobile workers to assess the possibilities and constraints in organizing for better working conditions in today's political-economic climate. Finally, the project has important policy implications, given that job movement and outsourcing are of crucial interest in both developed and developing countries. By studying broad patterns of job movement and the inner mechanisms of agency that determine these patterns, the dissertation will provide a better understanding of where jobs are moving and the reasons why they are moving there. This is an essential step in developing policies that attract and sustain quality jobs in an increasingly competitive global economy.
