Introduction

This chapter discusses the findings in the previous chapters and their theoretical and empirical implications as elicited by the six research questions that guided this study (Section 6.2). This is followed by a discussion of to what extent the theoretical notions in the global city theoretical framework and debate help us to understand the impact of the current phase of economic globalization on the social and economic realities of cities (Section 6.3). The concluding section discusses the alleged political implications of this study.

After the unravelling: theoretical and empirical implications

Sassen formulated the global city theoretical framework, namely the new conceptual architecture referred to in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, because previous explanations of changes in urban labour markets were considered to be inadequate when it came to understanding the impact of the recent phase of economic globalization on the social and economic realities of cities (Sassen, 1994, 2000, 2001, 2006a, 2012). The framework 1) argues that the new type of organizational structure that characterizes the current phase of globalization, i.e. the new international division of labour that stems from the practice of outsourcing parts of the production process from the advanced economies to newly-industrializing countries, has brought major changes to urban labour markets in the advanced economies, and 2) provides a theoretical rationale to explain how this came about.

Even though this rationale is comprised of several theoretical notions that were formulated in the 1980s and early 1990s, it is not yet clear whether, as its author claimed, it helps us to understand the impact of the current phase of economic globalization on the social and economic realities of cities. In the introductory chapter, it was argued that what is largely responsible for this theoretical stagnation is the fact that the global city theoretical framework is not a testable middle-range theory, but rather a grand composition, i.e. an agglomeration of integrated theories, propositions, and expectations.