How is Globalisation and Ethnicity linked?

Ethnicity is one of the most contentious issues in the globalisation debate. Ethnicity or what Arjun Appadurai terms "ethnoscapes" concerns the movement of people around the world (such as tourists, refugees, exiles, and guest workers).(1) Within a global framework it is much easier for money and goods and services to move than it is for most people (it is possible for transnational corporations to invest in nearly any part of the world and profit from the low wages of developing nations, but for low paid workers, it is very difficult to have any geographical mobility).

As you will find in the interviews, most people champion ethnic diversity as one of the major reasons that they like Fitzroy. Many people in Fitzroy cannot imagine a community in Australia that is any different in this regard. The various waves of immigrants to Australia are represented within the district through a vibrant café culture (a legacy of the Italians), restaurants, and many faces from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world.

Fitzroy has an historical inertia that has welcomed some of the larger movements of human beings. This is partly because the district has a large government housing estate for low-income workers and new migrants to the Australia, and partly because it has a number of charities, language services, and existing kinship networks for new migrants. more>>

(1) Appadurai, Arjun "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy" in Mike Featherstone (ed.) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalisation and Modernity, Sage Publications, London, 1990, pp.295-310.