Approach in economic research views intercultural contact as an engine of economic growth.

According to the economist Keith Griffin ( 1966, 2000), the commingling of cultures has led to economic innovation and growth in the past and has the potential for doing so in the future. Intercultural contact is this view has accelerated the diffusion of technologies and knowledges and the development of new technologies and forms of social and economic cooperation. Trade routes that figure in historiography as nodes of economic actifity ( as in the work of Henri Pirenne and Fernand Braudel ) also emerge as backbones of cultural transformation. In one of the many fascinating account of the Silk Roads, Sugyama Jiro recounts : In the third century B.C. King Asoka of Maurya sent groups of Buddhist missionaries to the west via the highway in western asia completed by Alexander the Great ( 1992 : 55 ). This road leads via the Gandara civilization to Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. The account also tells of a Buddhist statue that is found among the remains of Viking ships in Scandinavia. This illustrates that, over time, roads of conquest turn into roads of commerce and roads of cultural exchange. This approach means something radically different from considering migration as either an added value or cost the nation. It goes beyond the preoccupation with ethnic economies, ethnomarketing, or intercultural management. Rather , we come to see nation states as a grid that has been temporarily superimposed upon a deeper and ongoing stratum of human migrations and diasporas. We could then ask the reserve questions : how useful is the nation state structure ( national economies, national sovereignty, border controls ) to migration, considering that migration is a major site of cultural creativity and economic stimulus ? Presently the nation-state grid as the central and preferred organizational structures and forms of governance local, urban , regional, international and supranational such that institutional structures are increasingly becoming multiscalar. If we recognize the profound role of migration and intercultural contact in general and in economic history, what does this imply for current policies ? Understanding multiculturalism as a vital economic force is not insignificant in an era dominated by market values. Thus, a key question is not merely wether immigration is culturally desirable, morally preferable, or politically feasible, but whether and how it contributes to economic development. It may not be really feasible to separate economic from other dimensions of migration, but since so many discussions follow different tracks this option is followed here.

According to the economist Thomas Sowell, migration and cultural diffusion are now separable ; The transportation of bodies and the dissemination of human capital have become increasingly separable operations, so that the historic role of immigration in advancing nations need not apply to its future role ( 1996 :299). In short , international migrations have tended to become a less and less effective way of transferring human capital, at least as compared to alternatives that have emerged or grown importance ( ibid : 300 ). This is part of a wider argument against cultural relativism, affirmative action, and multiculturalism. Sowell concludes his study with an emphasis on the creation of wealth ( and an implicit polemic with the emphasis on the

distribution of wealth). There are several problems with this analysis. First, it overlooks the capacity of migrants to generate their own economic niches and resources. Second, in focusing of human capital its follows the liberal fallacy of viewing economics as an exchange among individuals, differentially endowed with skills and resources, and thus takes human capital as part of a liberal paradigm. In recent years this angle has been overtaken by the theme of social capital. Here the general perspective is that markets are socially embedded ( ala Polanyi ), economics is institusional, and what makes economies tick is not just individual skills and endowments ( human capital ) but social networks. Empirical research shows that embeddedness increases economic effectiveness along a number of dimensions that are crucial to competitiveness in a global economy organizational learning , risk-sharping and speed-tomarket . ( Uzzi 1996 : 694 ) Much interest in social capital has concentrated on ethnic economies : trust within ethnic groups lower transaction cost ; within ethnic groups social capital densities are highest and pay-offs greatest ( Light and Karageorgis 1994 ). Social capital marshals economic resources : for example the Korean hoa releasing family labor and capital for small enterprises in the United States ( Yoo 1998 ). While the ethnic economy argument demonstrates the role of social capital in wealth creation, it is confined to interactions within ethnic communities, which involves some limitations. One is the reification of ethnicity : the salience and boundaries of ethnicity should not be taken for granted ; ats actual boundaries and practices are fluid. The ethnic economy confirms ethnic boundaries , attributing greater solidity to them than may be justified, and involves an inward-looking take on ethnicity and social capital while inward-looking ethnicity is but one modality of ethnicity and what matters is not merely in-group but also intergroup social capital. In-group social capital matches a conservative approach to social capital, as path

dependence on the part of given social formations. It parallels a static take on multiculturalism as an archipelago of separate communities, a mosaic of fixed pieces, like a series of ghettos or apartheid multiplied. Social capital in this sense would match a conservative approach, an economics of apartheid revisited. More fruitful is to view multiculturalism as intercultural interplay and mingling, a terrain of crisscrossing cultural flows, in the process generating new combinations and options ; this applies in relation to political interest, life style choices, and economics opportunities. Along these lines there are several ways further, such as considering immigrant economies transnational diaspora enterprise, and general perspectives on cultural difference and development. Economic relations across cultural boundaries extend beyond employment and production, to trade and retail, credit investment ; and beyond immigrants, to natives or nationals, on the one hand, and overseas linkages, on the other. Since cultural differences often overlap with sosioeconomics differences ( as in the familiar race / class / gender patterns ) in many contexts economic relations across culture/ class differences may be as common as economic relations within culturally homogeneous sttings. Thus, in Latin America this involves relations between uraban criolos, Ladinos, and indigenes ; in Africa, between urban entrepreneurs and rural workers or suppliers, often belonging to different ethnicities ; in North America, between migrant labor and many types of employers. These relations are so numerous and diverse that key obviously involve many different types of relations across a wide continuum from exploitative to cooperative relations. The profound historical significance of such networks is well known, as shown in studies of Asian entrepreneurial minorities and their role in the making of the world economy ( Dobbin 1996 ) and other diasporas ( Kotkin 1992 ). Stereotypes of trading minorities ( such as the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese and Hausa in West Africa ) exploiting local labor many conceal the actual diversity of cross-cultural social capital. We should not merely consider segmented societies but also their in-between spaces and adjacent border zones. We would need a typology of cross-cultural economic relations, and the finer the analytic maze the finer the yield. The transnational informal sector of small traders in foodstuffs, garments, and spare parts are part of huge transnational entrepreneurial networks that are invisible and unmonitored because they are informal. They typically operate in economic and legal interstices of economic zones

and connect migrant and home communities. They really bridge North South development gaps. What would be the scope for policy interventions that can strengthen these entrepreneurial activities and deepen their contribution to bridging North South worlds ? The glaring paradoxes of contemporary globalization include the free movement of capital, on the one hand , and the restricted movement of people and labor, on the other, on the one hand, restrictions on migration and, on the other, the wide North South gap and growing labor deman in graying labor markets. This in itself creates economic opportunity structures. Uneven development ( such as differential wage rates, labor conditions, ecological standards, and brain drain from developing countries ) serves as a major economic opportunity structure of different market niches. Migration involves boon and bane for sending and receiving regions. Diasporas and transnational communities utilize the differentials created by political boundaries in a host of ways, from grassroots transnational enterprises ( Portes 1995 ) to criminal organizations ( William and Vlassis 1997 ). To address the paradoxes of globalization would involve policy interventions from managing migration ( Bhagwati 2003 ) to global social policy ( Deacon et al 1998 ) In countries that have newly become immigration countries labor markets tend to be closed and institutional impediments stand in the way of integrating migrant labor. The Old World is becoming a New World for many but with old institutions. The dilemma is either to protect or to open the welfare state. A dilemma for migrants is to follow the official route and become deskilled and dependent in the process, or to become active enterprise in the black economy and risk becoming illegal. The options for the Old World countries are either to lower or remove institutional impediments on labor markets and enterprise, or to accept hierarchical integration in the form of segmented labor markets to the disadvantage of migrants. The former may entail dismantling the welfare state to its residual form, as in the New World model of free enterprise which entails ghettos and social gaps. This implies a scenario of californianization while califoenia is being Brazilianized. Keynesianism is not likely to be revived on a nation basis and EU-wide social settlements are slow in the making. Is the alternative to reduce institutional impediments and to go American? But part of the American way is individualism, ghettos, and crime.

Prophetic and utopian visions of human intregation and unity have often been wide in spirit but not specific in the forms this might take. When they have been specific, they have often turned oppressive, as a critical literature testifies. Platos Republic, Campanellas city of the sun, Francis Bacons new atlantis, fouriers simon, Lenins democraric centralism failed blueprints of social engineering litter the record of history. Speaking at a very general level, forms of human intregation while enabling at some stage, turn disabling at a further juncture-the family, the clan, the village, tribe empire, monarchy, nation state, republic, the concert of nation, the pan movement and so forth, have all led human integration up to a point and then become constraints and background music. The point is not be anti-utopian but to be loosely utopian, not give up on emancipatory human intregation as a myth of sisyphus, but to take the form it takes sufficiently lightly. More precisely, both the intent and the form need to be taken seriously but require combining different kind of seriousness. Reform require seriousness of detail and implementation but need to be taken lightly over time, as political circumstances change and can change with lightning speed. Globalization, then, involves human integration, but this is a long-term, uneven and paradoxial process. Intercultural relations have been crucial to national accumulation all along, though often their contribution has not been recognized. In the era of regionalization, crossborder intercultural relations build social and institutional tissue that is vital to present and future econimic performance. Ethnic economies interweave regions spatially (as in the case of the chinese diaspora in the pasific basin) while interethnic economies weave links acroos segmented social formations. There are no easy shortcut to the global eqution. The nation state, the main form of human intregation since the nineteenth century, is gradually making place for a wider variety of govermance arrangements and different forms of intregation including macroregions and international and supranational form of governance, which also open democratic deficits. Migrations, diasporas and multiculturalism, decentralization and the emergence of nongovernmental organizations and social movements local and transnational are tugging away at this format, slowly prefiguring different kinds of political dispensation.