Rethinking Regionalism

Rethinking the links between micro-regions and macro-regions

“…It is more or less generally accepted that we may distinguish between different scales (or levels) of regions and regionalism, such as macro-regions, sub-regions and micro-regions (Breslin and Hook 2002;Perkmann and Sum 2002;Söderbaum 2016Söderbaum , 2005. A problem in previous literature lies in the tendency to make overly sharp distinctions between macro-regions and micro-regions and to concentrate on one particular type of region.…”

“…The next step in the framework is to approach regions as social constructions. The framework developed in this chapter draws heavily on the NRA (Söderbaum 2004(Söderbaum , 2016; also see Hettne et al 1999, Hettne 2005Söderbaum and Shaw 2003;Söderbaum and Taylor 2008;Shaw et al 2011).…”

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“…policy direction, institutions, and agents) contexts (Soderbaum, 2015). Furthermore, old, new and comparative regionalisms are differentiated by their actors (state; state vs. non-state; and state and non-state) and modes of governance (nationalism; resisting/ taming/advancing economic globalisation; and regions as part of multi-level global governance) respectively (Laursen, 2008;Soderbaum, 2013;.…”

Global–regional interaction to extend access to social protection for migrant workers: Insights from ASEAN and MERCOSUR

“…The evolution and expansion of the concept of regional migration governance – a concept which is characteristically flexible in nature – has been hotly debated (Lavenex, forthcoming). Moreover, the definition of regionalism has been widely discussed, for example by Soderbaum, in the context of international relations studies, and as he points out the concept of regions “means different things to different people in different contexts and time periods and, for some observers, regionalism may not mean much at all” (Soderbaum, , p. 1). This can also explain why, in the context of migration and migrants’ rights, the regional dimension is not well‐known: not only because of a lack of clarity on how to identify the regional level, but also because of a continuing absence of comparative studies taking a non‐Eurocentric perspective (Soderbaum, ).…”