AGDK14003U Transnational Actors, Networks and Place Making

It is almost impossible today to imagine development at the scale of the nation-state: global flows of people, information, ideas, investments and remittances are now key determinants shaping development at the local level. Development actors are no longer just national governments. Instead, all kinds of transnational actors—from companies to diaspora groups and NGOs—play a prominent role in shaping development agendas, as do the new mobile technologies and social media that facilitate such transnational activity. The “Global North” (North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan) is no longer taken for granted as a source of inspiration and funding of models of development: around the BRICS initiative, new discourses of development travel between countries in the Global South (Africa, Latin America and Asia), accompanied by new resource flows, for instance from China and India to Africa. But not just the world order is affected by global flows: also the established pattern of development between urban centers and rural areas is being restructured through such flows resulting in livelihood transitions and new and intensified forms of mobility. In the context of neoliberal governance and increasing securitization, illegal flows moreover start to have a significant impact on development trajectories.

Transnational Actors, Networks and Place Making equip students with the skills to examine development beyond the nation-state, to understand how global flows affect the seeming coherence of previous models of development. It introduces students to global flows that shape development agendas and outcomes locally, with an emphasis on studying not just material but also immaterial flows of ideas, discourses, and new forms of connectivity.