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- 79 THE DISCOURSE OF GLOBALIZATION GLOBALIZATION AND THE WALLS By Paul Vieille27 Introduction We are being told that Globalization implies a liberty to move everything and everybody everywhere on a global scale. It is a world market for goods, capital, ideas and persons: that is, the freedom to circulate. In reality everything circulates easily except people. Many want to move, but they are not allowed to do so. Those who try meet hindrances everywhere: walls, prohibitions against settling in another country, police controls, institutional obstacles, etc. IsthereanythingthatdoesnotworkthewayitshouldwhenitcomestoGlobalization? Or are the problems inherent in the structure of Globalization itself? Mondialisation and Globalization – a Preliminary Remark The obstacles which block the circulation of individuals seem even more strange and misplaced because the freedom to move is a fundamental right. In this connection, I should like to point out that we should at least distinguish between two things: the world making process and Globalization. Globalization is what we get our ears filled with daily: the full freedom of commerce, the dismantling of custom barriers, the end of subventions to producers etc. By mondialisation (this French term has no equivalent in English28 ) I have in mind another process, an anthropological, very old process. I am thinking of an essential ability of human beings to want to discover, to continue and to move on. The extension of this process to the whole of humanity seems to get lost in the shadows of time. And it is understandable that the right to move has emerged as a fundamental right of the individual, guaranteed by the Declarations of Human Rights. The ones who can’t relocate, leave the place where they do not feel at ease and conversely 27 Editors’ note: This article was presented at the IMPLAN conference and given to us in French. We, the editors of this volume have translated it into English. 28 The expression world making process is borrowed from Walter Mignolo, “The Zapatistas’s Theoretical Revolution: Its Historic, Ethics and Political Consequences”, Review, XXV, 3, 2002. ...

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