BOOK REVIEW Globalisation Challenges to Research and Governance by Kultalahti, Jukka, Ilari Kauppi, Olli Kultalahti, Enrico Todisco REVIEWED BY PERTTU SALMENHAARA Helsinki, East-west Books, 2009, ISBN 978-952-99592-6-6, 357 pp.Kultalahti, Jukka, Ilari Kauppi, Olli Kultalahti, Enrico Todisco

Perttu Salmenhaara

English

Research Papers in Economics

 
 
Migration Letters, Volume: 7, No: 2, pp. 241 – 242 
ISSN: 1741-8984 & eISSN: 1741-8992 
October 2010 
www.migrationletters.com 
 
 
241 
BOOK REVIEW 
Globalisation 
Challenges to Research and Governance 
by Kultalahti, Jukka, Ilari Kauppi,  
Olli Kultalahti, Enrico Todisco 
 
 
 
REVIEWED BY 
PERTTU  
SALMENHAARA * 
Helsinki: East-west Books, 2009 
ISBN: 978-952-99592-6-6, 357 pp.   
 
Globalisation can be understood as a variety of flows, controlling these flows is a means of 
controlling globalisation. This is the central claim of this book: essentially Saskia Sassen’s old 
“global cities” theory with added considerations about control and administration of global-
isation. 
The background of the book is explained on page 9: “[t]he book is a joint effort of an 
[…] international network of academics and professional experts from diverse disciplinary 
and institutional background”. Named the Tampere group, the number of participants varies. 
When the book was compiled, the group had 43 members from eleven countries. The aim of 
the Tampere group was to develop convergent approaches and methods for globalisation 
research. Between 2001 and 2008 the group members met a total of five times in Italy and 
Finland.  This book is a final report of the group’s work between 2001 and 2008. 
The line of research the book is dealing with is the impact of globalisation on societies. It 
does not try to explain globalisation as it considers globalisation an inevitability that can, 
however, be studied. Thus, whereas Karl Popper spoke of “social engineering”, this book 
might be considered to represent “global engineering”, i.e. practically oriented management 
of the consequences of globalisation. In earlier literature there has been much philosophical 
and political debate about whether globalisation should be seen as an unavoidable fact. This 
debate is not in the scope of this book. 
Globalisation literature is very rich. Since it has been subject of so many books and stud-
ies for decades, one could be tempted to ask whether this book is a little late? What insights 
into globalisation have previously been missed that would create a need for yet another book 
on the subject?  What has escaped the focus of Saskia Sassen, Anthony Giddens or Jürgen 
Habermas? In the book, it is acknowledged that there has been very much previous research 
into the subject, although this is not mentioned specifically. 
The book’s focus is on the consequences of globalisation. There is an attempt to theorise 
how to administer globalisation. The hypothesis of the book is not totally new: globalisation 
is seen as an economy-driven process (Sassen) which however can be controlled by means of 
politics and legislation (Habermas). The impact of globalisation differs in different countries 
(Hardt & Negri), which calls for different ways to administer it (Habermas). Globalisation has 
its greatest impact on cities and the urban labour market (Sassen).  
The hypothesis suggests that globalisation can be viewed as a “system of flows”. Interna-
tional migration, the flow of people, is one of these; it is connected to other flows such as 
the flow of (economic) capital. Thus the hypothesis is closely related to Sassen’s theory of 
global cities. The flows would proceed via social networks as suggested in social capital theo-
ries. The book posits that there are various flows which when combined produce a system 
of flows.  
Because Sassen and social capital theorists have previously come to more or less the 
same kinds of conclusions, there is relatively little that is new in the theory of flows. The 
                                                 
* University of Helsinki, Finland.   
www.migrationletters.com 
242 
novelty of this book is that it suggests managing globalisation would amount to affecting these 
flows by the means of policy and legislation. The actual outcome could be innovative but it 
may also be used as grounds for measures such as reactive migration control. 
The research design of the Tampere group’s research was mostly based on qualitative 
data, namely the use of informants. The methodology is explained in more detail in the In-
troduction. The members of the Tampere group also cooperated extensively with each oth-
er between 2001 and 2008 and many ideas stemmed from discussions between the group’s 
members. From the very start of the project, the group took a multi-disciplinary stance to-
wards globalisation. 
Implications and interpretation of the results of the group’s work are reported in this 
book. The book consists of eighteen articles, written by Ilari Karppi, Elina Rantalahti, Mara Di 
Berado, Antonio Pacinelli, Simone Di Zio, Olli Kultalahti, Arno Tanner, Berhane Tewolde, 
Enrico Todisco, Bruno Lefort, Cristian Norocel, Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko, Jukka Kultalahti, 
Jukka Viljanen, Timo Aarrevaara, Veli-Pekka Nurmi and Ari Stenvall. 
The articles are grouped into four sections: 1) analysing and developing methods; 2) hu-
man mobility and development in globalisation: 3) cultural aspects of globalisation; 4) govern-
ance of globalisation.  
The need for future research is discussed: “[m]methodological aspects […] need further 
development and harmonisation” (p. 27). This refers to that the multi-disciplinary approach 
that is one of the strengths of the study, but also created some challenges. For example, 
different authors refer to the same concepts differently. This is an endemic problem in the 
social sciences and is not alleviated even when this study’s concepts are compared to estab-
lished concepts used in migration studies, economics and human and social capital theories. 
As a research report the book is satisfactory. It includes all the basic elements that a 
good social scientific study should. Nevertheless, there are some shortcomings. For example, 
the reasons why foreign immigrants are often on the margins of the labour market. Some 
previous research by Alejandro Portes (ethnic economies) is ignored as well as the longitudi-
nal studies carried out by George Borjas. These earlier studies show that, contrary to what is 
suggested in this book, foreign immigrants do not end up on the margins of the labour mar-
ket by choice. That in fact, their labour market position increases as the period of residence 
in the receiving country increases. However, despite some shortcomings the book reflects a 
good piece of research.  

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