Chapter 9: The “Others” Fight Back: Struggles for Language Rights in Japan

Within the last couple of decades, globalization and global flows of people have created space where a range of social networks, social movements, and organizations have developed at the transnational level. In this new economic environment, the global has been influencing the local as the world economy is becoming more integrated as a civic society at this transnational level (Batliwala, 2002); old and new economies and financial institutions are working across borders. These institutions are helping shape policies internationally and nationally in the form of the World Bank, the Internationally Monetary Funds, the World Trade Organizations, and other regional organizations such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, the European Union, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Batliwala, 2002).