Chapter 2: Reinventing Education in a Global World

Two crucial and significant phenomena are favoring a society in continuous change and transformation: on the one hand, globalization processes that demonstrate the expiration of the nation state and, on the other, the new migratory movements (De Lucas, 2003). And we talk about new migration movements because the passage of people from one place to another is not new. The new characteristics of current migrations are their volume and the fast-moving and adaptive strategies used by new migrants (Soriano, 2006; Trueba, 2002).

Globalization comprises a process of increasing internationalization of financial, industrial and commercial capital, new international political relations and the emergence of transnational companies which in turn produce new productive, distributive and consumer processes, geographically delocalized and an unprecedented expansion of the use of technologies (Tedesco, 1998). What is exported today are not only manufactured goods, but capital and profits. This process has effects on the environment, culture, political systems, economic development and prosperity, and also on human physical well-being in societies around the world” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007, p. 1).