The use of new information and communications technologies makes it possible for many kinds of work involving information processing to be relocated anywhere in the world where the right infrastructure exists.

During the late 1970s and 1980s, when we began collecting information on this, it was necessary to make out a case that a new international division of labour was developing in information-processing services, just as it had in some manufacturing industries a decade or two earlier. In the 1990s it became fashionable to argue as though all activities had become delocalisable and that we are entering a new kind of global economy (variously described as the cyber, networked, digital, weightless, virtual, knowledge or simply e-economy). Out aim is to map the reality which lies somewhere between these positions: to identify the kinds of activity which are delocalisable and those which are not; to measure the extent to which this relocation is actually happening, the countries and regions involved and the criteria which govern the choice of site; and to explore the implications for employment and for local economic development.

In 2000 we succeeded in obtaining resources to carry out a major empirical study in this area, EMERGENCE, which has now begun to produce results. Full details of this project and its activities and publications can be found on http://www.emergence.nu

Here is an annotated list of some other publications by Ursula Huws which discuss these developments:

• 'The Making of a Cybertariat: virtual work in a real world' in Panitch, L., and Leys, C. (eds), Socialist Register, 2001 , Merlin Press, UK and Monthly Review Press, USA, 2001. This looks at theories of class and how adequate (or inadequate) they are to explain the emerging phemenon of a widely dispersed global workforce which shares the same labour process (thanks to Microsoft) the same language (thanks to past patterns of Anglo Saxon Imperialism) strongly converging organisational cultures (thanks to the dominance of multinational corporations) and, increasingly, the same ultimate employers (ditto) but who, nevertheless, in Weberian and other terms occupy strongly divergent class positions and allegiances.
  
• Teleworking and Globalisation (with Nick Jagger and Siobhan O'Regan), Report No 358, Institute for Employment Studies, Brighton, 1999, Subtitled 'Towards a methodology for mapping and measuring the merging global division of labour in the information economy' this offers a critical overview of the existing evidence on the global redistribution of information-processing work and, using cluster analysis techniques, analyses some 60 statistical indicators for 207 countries to construct a preliminary categorisation of countries according to their propenisty to attract various different types of employment including software development, call centre work and data entry. It also includes a global summary of the evidence on teleworking, including a detailed analysis of the UK labour force survey.
• 'Material World: the Myth of the Weightless Economy', in Panitch, L., and Leys, C. (eds), Socialist Register, 1999 , Merlin Press, UK and Monthly Review Press, USA, 1999 (in a critique of the notion that the economy is becoming more knowledge-intensive with added value coming increasingly from dematerialised activities, this article argues that in fact the major trend is commodification, with an ever-increasing production of material goods which have to physically (and energy-intensively) transported around the globe. It also discusses the measurement of 'knowledge work' and the 'productivity paradox', drawing on the under-recognised work of the late Henry Neuburger)
• 'Beyond Anecdotes: on Quantifying the Globalisation of Information Processing Work', United Nations University Institute for New Technologies Conference on Globalised Information Society: Employment Implications , Maastricht, 1996 (discusses various different concepts of globalisation, looks at the difficulty of estimating its extent and makes some suggestions for future research)
• 'Teleworking and the Redistribution of Employment', paper presented to OECD workshop Information Structures and Territorial Development , Paris, 7-8 November, 1995 (looks at the various different forms of teleworking and the criteria influencing the choice of location. This paper also proposes a set of indicators for estimating the contribution of relocated information-processing work to local economic development)
• Teleworking: an Overview of the Research, Joint publication of the Department of Transport, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of the Environment, Department for Education and Employment and Employment Service, July, 1996 (contains an extensive review of the literature on the relationship between information technology and industrial location, a discussion of the evidence of the development of a global division of labour and recommendations for future research on the subject)
• Action Programmes for the Protection of Homeworkers, ILO, 1995 (taking as its starting point the recognition that globalisation involves the relocation of manual as well as non-manual work and a growth in traditional forms of homeworking, these ten case studies examine new forms of organisation by homeworkers in Europe, Asia and North America)
• The Global Restructuring of Service Industries and its Implications for Women' in IRENE Newsletter, Industrial Restructuring Network Europe, March, 1991 (the report of a workshop on the subject)
• 'The Global Office: Information Technology and the Relocation of White-collar work' in Third World Trade and Technology Conference Papers , Third World Information Network, 1985 (a conference paper designed to provoke discussion amongst delegates from third world countries about the threats and opportunities posed by the new developments)
• The Runaway Office Jobs', International Labour Reports , March-April, 1984 (an early and much-plagiarised article giving examples of offshore information processing and suggesting that they may give rise to a new international division of labour in information processing)
• 'Chips on the Cheap: South East Asian Women Pay the Price', in Scarlet Women No 14, January, 1982 (an early article, drawing on the work of Rachel Grossman and others, on the international division of labour in microelectronics production)