Globalizations

This paper examines two cases of land deals in Kachin State, Myanmar, using a case study approach informed by critical agrarian studies and a landscape perspective. The research draws on household surveys and interviews to analyze an 80,000-hectare corporate-pursued biofuel crop concession and a 58,000 hectare ‘pin prick’ land accumulation for banana plantations. Immersed in the broader political economy of geopolitics, dispossession, and armed conflict, both cases reveal that while most studies focused on operational land deals, ‘failed’ land deals are also sites of important and complex political struggles. However, outcomes of land struggles – whether in the form of ‘public victory’ or ‘silent return’ (of land to people; of people to the land) – do not necessarily translate to socially just outcomes for rural working people.

The Humanitarian-Development-Peace Triple Nexus seeks to increase cooperation and coordination to address short- and long-term needs of populations and create effective sustainable solutions. Through a gender and intersectional lens, we examine how humanitarian, development and peace practices and policies by state and non-state actors address the needs of refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants in Central Mexico. Drawing on ethnographic research and secondary sources, we find that international organizations used the HDP framework explicitly and implicitly to assist, train, and coordinate local government officials and civil society organizations. Although this process registered modest success, the long-term sustainability of these advances is threatened by the local exit of international organizations due to geopolitical conflicts and the turnover of elected officials. Furthermore, the development and peace dimensions of the HDP framework demand involvement of and coordination with national and transnational actors across different scales for them to be successfully addressed.

The article analyzes how migration shapes the circulation of workers and struggles. The aim is to territorialize both the industry and meanings of work and collectivities for workers. In research on migration and the digital economy, the games industry has been underrepresented. The article builds on labour process theory framework and two case studies, with (1) Brazilian migrants working abroad and (2) workers from various parts of the world working in Britain, highlighting both the commonalities and the specificities of the circulation of the workforce and struggles. While the first case points out a migrant workforce dispersed around the world who experience difficulties as migrants while being considered a 'skilled' workforce, the second showcases how a country recruits migrants into the games industry and how workers of different nationalities work and organize themselves. Both cases reveal how territorialized the workforce is as well as desires and challenges in organizing. ARTICLE HISTORY

Youth are official stakeholders of global environmental politics (GEP) since 1992, and several youth platforms have been created within the framework of the United Nations since the 2000s. However, recently, the oppositional voice of youth, through climate protests, has increased worldwide. While official youth platforms have been active over the years, this article asks to which extent they mitigate a descriptive representation gap in GEP. Academic investigation on these platforms is extremely limited. To fill this gap, we track the creation history and the governance evolution of four transnational youth platforms, investigating two research hypotheses. To create new data, our methodology relies on official documentation, observations at international meetings and interviews. Results show the fragility of youth platforms in GEP. However, a strong ownership of these platforms by youth enables them to get a certain leeway for effective representation, of youth, and of civil society more broadly.

The spatial fix of capital underpins many attempts to green(wash) capitalism. Analytically, the spatiotemporal fix concept allows us to examine how capitalism overcomes its socio-ecological crises. Here, we make an empirical-conceptual contribution by highlighting regulatory attempts to green capital by preventing it from spatially fixing itself through carbon leakage. Empirically, we draw on the case of the European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to examine the extent to which CBAM is designed to undo the spatial fix of capital, and how carbon leakage becomes a locus of contention about industrial and development policy. Whilst CBAM may manage to partially prevent the spatial fix of capital within the EU's jurisdiction, we contend that its ambition to affect change beyond EU borders and to contribute to absolute emission reductions will face mounting challenges in the context of intensifying geopolitical and geoeconomic competition.

Amid mounting geopolitical, socioeconomic , and ecological crises, industrial policy has returned to the forefront of policy debates. However, the EU's industrial policy framework-centred on Single Market Resilience, Strategic Autonomy, and Competitive Sustainability-contains self-undermining contradictions. While aiming for resilience, it fails to strengthen foundational non-market institutions; in seeking strategic autonomy, it exacerbates resource dependencies and eco-imperialist tensions; and in promoting competitive sustainability, it remains reliant on profit-driven private sector strategies that delay necessary transitions. This article critically examines these contradictions using immanent critique and conjunctural analysis, proposing an alternative post-growth framework based on Foundational Liveability, Peaceful Planetary Co-Existence , and Democratically Coordinated Sustainability. To bridge the gap between current constraints and transformative change, we use critical problem-solving to outline contested but feasible next best transition steps within the current politico-economic order. By integrating post-growth insights into industrial policy, this article offers a roadmap for aligning economic activity with planetary boundaries and social well-being.

The 2008 financial crisis contributed to a long-term trend towards precarious employment, particularly through platform capitalism, which was used to overcome the accumulation crisis, with a greater incidence in the services and tourism sectors. In the migratory flow, Portugal presents itself as a gateway to Europe, mainly for immigrants from the Global South and Asian countries, seeking for better living and working conditions. The gig economy poses a unique opportunity for surviving and entering the labour market for this new transnational digital proletariat, even if assuming contours of precarity, informality, invisibility and suffering. Between January 2023 and February 2024, in-depth interviews and focus-groups were conducted with immigrant couriers and app-drivers, activists and stakeholders. The aim is to analyse the impacts of digital platform work in their occupational trajectories, focusing also in the legislation process. Despite the digital precarious working conditions, there is a new generation of immigrant transnational working-class militants.

The paper analyses an often-overlooked domain of the global AI workforce, shedding light on the significance of workers engaged in humanitarian labour inclusion initiatives. Focusing on DignifAI, an AI annotation service provider situated on the Colombia-Venezuela border, the research examines its efforts to offer dignified employment opportunities to Venezuelan migrants. Through interviews with international workers, managers, and officials involved in the programme, the study explores the personal experiences and subjectivities shaped by AI training work within this inclusive framework. It investigates how dignity plays a pivotal role in the transformation of labour power into a commodity within prevailing production relations, shifting the discourse on AI labour from mere exploitation to themes of autonomy, control, and consent within industrial capitalism. The research also critically evaluates humanitarian initiatives, highlighting the tension between benevolent discourses of inclusion and the structural challenges faced by vulnerable populations. ARTICLE HISTORY