Since 2016, the team of the collective project "Global Spaces for the Expansion of Transnational Capital in the Americas," comprised of researchers from various institutions and members of social organizations from several countries in the Americas and Europe, which had been developing research on regional integration, borders, and globalization since the 1980s, decided to participate in the VIII Call of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) for the creation of a Working Group for the period 2016-2019, which was later approved for the period 2019-2022. With this application, it hopes to advance for three more years in its consolidation.

Throughout the six years of work, the dimensions of the CLACSO Working Group "Borders, Regionalization and Globalization" (currently 243 members, out of the 130 with which we started) and its presence in 17 countries (4 of them European) and American, have meant that despite the difficulties, mechanisms of fluid collective work were established, managing to maintain and develop the theoretical-methodological perspective of the collective project by disseminating the results of analysis and collective discussion among the majority of the members of the GT, debating respectfully with those who have different theoretical-methodological perspectives.

The working mechanisms we have used and will continue to use in the next period include workshops for theoretical and methodological analysis and discussion, current events, and meetings with social organizations and movements, among others; the participation of Working Group members in panels, symposia, roundtables, and forums at international congresses, culminating in final plenary sessions for the Working Group to discuss and reach agreements; and the signing of letters of intent between the Working Group and social organizations for joint and participatory collaboration in analyzing issues that impact their territories, common resources, and their community life and organization. Some members of our Working Group are also members of social organizations, which facilitates collaborative work between both parties.

Most members of our Working Group are critical academics committed to social issues and lack institutional support. Therefore, our research activities, especially those we conduct with social organizations, are funded by the researchers' own resources and, occasionally, with support from the organizations and communities we join and collaborate with. Initiatives for the mobility and exchange of researchers and postdoctoral fellows, such as those between Brazil and Mexico or between Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, have also yielded positive results. These initiatives have also led to the formation of research teams focused on specific topics and/or regions, as well as thematic networks that are interconnected through various forms and cross-cutting themes, some of which have been present since the first international congresses in the 1990s.

Following two congresses held during the GT's existence—the 17th in 2019 in Foz do Iguaçu, organized locally by the Federal University for Latin American Integration (UNILA), and the 18th in 2021 in La Ceiba, organized locally by the National Autonomous University of Honduras—as well as two pre-congresses organized locally by the National University of Southern Patagonia in Río Gallegos (2018), coinciding with the 8th CLACSO Conference in Buenos Aires, and in 2021 in the city of Posadas, organized locally by the Institute of Social and Human Studies of the National University of Misiones, progress was made in defining the following axes for the congresses, which will form the basis for organizing the GT's work in the 2023-2025 period: a) Global Spaces and Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation for the expansion of transnational capital through free trade agreements and megaprojects for the “Development.” Social struggles and resistance to confront it and the advance of inequalities and the global police state; b) The militarization of essential “development” functions and the advance of the global police state to criminalize and contain social upheavals. The “securitization” of borders and democracy; and c) Capitalism and the global labor market. Transnational migrants and refugees in essential sectors of the economy and their vulnerability to the pandemic and the aftermath of COVID-19. The “securitization” of migration and borders.

The main objective of the GT is: to analyze how the regions of the United States-Mexico Border; of the Mesoamerica Development and Integration Project (Mesoamerica Project); of the Amazon; and of the Southern Andean-Patagonian region, as well as other spaces, are being produced as new Global Spaces for the expansion of capital, in its transnational accumulation phase, from the capitalist restructuring that took place during the 1970s and 1980s, subordinating or subjecting to the territorial supremacy of transnational entities the borders and territorial sovereignties of the nation-states integrated into said expansion. Likewise, it aims to analyze how, in the face of these instances and transnational capital, which try to impose their hegemony or domination, social protest and the mobilization of peoples and communities emerge, which as forms of struggle antagonize and resist large-scale projects that impact their lands and territories in various ways, incorporating strategies of territorial escalation and insertion into global networks of resistance and alternative movements.

The following are the specific objectives:

a) Analyze how the Global Spaces mentioned in the general objective, the borders of the United States-Mexico; Mexico-Guatemala; the Trifinio (Guatemala-Honduras-El Salvador); Nicaragua-Costa Rica; Colombia-Venezuela; Brazil-French Guiana; Triple Frontier of Iguazu (Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina); Argentina-Chile, are being reconfigured under the neoliberal globalizing perspective, through mechanisms of the binomial hegemony-subordination/ domination-coercion, as occurs with free trade agreements, cross-border cooperation, as well as securitization and militarization that they require for their development and protection.

b) To investigate how, in these Global Spaces, particularly at borders, regional integration processes, geostrategic plans, and megaprojects are implemented for the benefit of transnational capital and to the detriment of local populations. Furthermore, to analyze how specific zones of intense accumulation are being formed in these global spaces as a result of capital escalation, materialized in megaprojects, and how these projects promote and guarantee conditions for the further commodification of nature.

c) To analyze the forced displacements and migrations carried out within the framework of geostrategic agreements and plans and regional security plans in areas considered most important for the development of megaprojects, or as a consequence thereof. The study will also examine how the mechanisms of dispossession and capitalization of natural resources impact the deterioration of local ecosystems and environments, also causing forced migrations.

d) As an organizational/methodological objective, the strengthening of the experiences developed will be promoted, and in particular the thematic networks and initiatives transversal to the axes and teams that make up the GT.

The theoretical and methodological development of the collective project has been substantial, and a large part of the goals established in the original 2016 proposal have been achieved. This progress is evident in the virtual postgraduate seminar (2019) that members of our Working Group conducted from August to October as part of the 2019 CLACSO virtual seminars, as well as in congresses, the CLACSO conference, collaborations with other Working Groups through joint statements and activities during the conference, books, articles, and workshops. This seminar demonstrated how the global capitalist restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s entailed the restructuring of many regions worldwide to meet the needs of continuing and expanding transnational capital accumulation. To this end, the agents of this capital have promoted the creation of Global Spaces for its more intensive expansion across the planet. The concept of global space was developed by William I. Robinson in his theoretical perspective on global capitalism, arguing that in the current phase of capitalist development, certain strategic zones are being subordinated to the territorial supremacy of entities that are forming an incipient transnational state, as well as a transnational capitalist class. These are new spaces produced through global policies that guide investment decisions in specific and dynamic productive activities (aerospace, electronics, automotive, and IT industries) along the Mexico-US border, extending to industrial and export processing complexes on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Added to these are transportation, energy, and telecommunications corridors and infrastructures that guarantee both the circulation of goods and information and access to spaces for the appropriation/capitalization of nature (energy, minerals, food, and cheap labor), as well as mechanisms of control and militarization. Furthermore, these spaces give rise to the development of resistance, the criminalization of social protest, and the repression of peoples and communities.

These global spaces in the Americas would encompass the United States-Mexico border, the Mesoamerica Project area, the Amazon, and the Southern Andean-Patagonian region. We are discussing the formation of other potential global spaces, particularly the Greater Caribbean Basin and the Río de la Plata Basin, as well as the history of these types of subordinate incorporations into global processes, present in some of these spaces since the late 19th century, as in the case of Southern Patagonia and Mesoamerica (Panama Canal). Currently, all these spaces are traversed by geostrategic plans such as the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) and the Mesoamerica Project. The exploitation of these energy, mineral, and food resources takes place in Specific Spaces of Intense Accumulation (ZEIA), through the implementation of megaprojects within the framework of extractive regimes. This is not a strategy exclusive to any one state; North American, European, Chinese, and other capital sources are also involved. In this way, processes of geographical expansion are expressed as uneven geographical development (Smith; Harvey) and give rise to a new political ecology.

To analyze the emergence and development of the aforementioned Global Spaces for the expansion of transnational capital in the Americas, the CLACSO Working Group has been developing a method for analyzing the Collective Project of the same name from the perspective of the critique of political economy, historical materialism, and its dialectical method, establishing a categorical and conceptual framework that moves from the general to the particular and from the abstract to the concrete. Thus, we begin with the category of space and its production in capitalism, as developed by Henri Lefebvre; we continue with the analysis of the globalization of production and the financial circuits from which the expansion of transnational capital is carried out (David Harvey) for the appropriation and capitalization of nature (Jason Moore 2003) and its configuration as Global Spaces and Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation (Juan Manuel Sandoval). This process occurs alongside the centralization of command and control of the global economy in transnational capital (William I. Robinson), and the concentration of this capital (for its management, accumulation, and valorization) requires other global or denationalized spaces—Global Cities (Saskia Sassen) or special economic zones. We continue with the analysis of uneven geographical development (Neil Smith, David Harvey, Claudia Villegas) to show how transnational capital is located and expands within global spaces, where this capital materializes in the form of megaprojects and geostrategic plans, both fixed and in place, as well as what happens in the spaces through which the flows of global capitalism expand and circulate (Milton Santos).

The general framework within which these conceptual issues are situated is William Robinson's theoretical perspective on global capitalism. Robinson (2013) points out that globalization, which initiated a new and dramatic expansion of capital at the end of the 20th century—more intensive than extensive—and in which capitalist exchange relations invade and commodify all public and private spheres that had previously remained beyond their reach, constitutes a new stage in the evolution of capitalism. This stage is marked by a number of qualitative changes in the capitalist system and by novel articulations of social power: 1) The emergence of truly transnational capital and a new system of global production and finance; 2) The emergence of the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC); 3) The emergence of a Transnational State (TNS); 4) New relations of inequality, domination, and exploitation in global society.

From the perspective of the CLACSO Working Group on "Borders, Regionalization, and Globalization," the socioeconomic and political reality of Latin America and the Caribbean cannot be viewed separately from that of North America. Therefore, we focus on analyzing how transnational capital seeks to expand throughout the continent and at the global level. To achieve this, it seeks to subordinate national spaces to transnational ones through Global Spaces created in various regions of the hemisphere and promotes both consensual and coercive policies that guarantee capital's expansion. Thus, "securitization" and militarization, as well as the criminalization of social protest, accompany free trade agreements and other strategies (Mesoamerica Project, IIRSA, etc.) to ensure this expansion. Socioeconomic analysis must not be separated from political analysis, since the neo-fascist policies of Trump in the United States and those of Bolsonaro in Brazil are not separate, despite the thousands of kilometers separating the two countries. Meanwhile, other reformist, social-democratic, or openly neoliberal policies are leading other countries down the same path. Robinson argues that it is important to analyze the crisis of state legitimacy as a backdrop for understanding the rise of Trumpism in the United States and the shift to the far right around the world. Furthermore, it is important to analyze the new round of penetration and expansion of transnational capital in Latin America and the ways in which this expansion intertwines with the region's political dynamics, including the resurgence of the right.