The Working Group has been active since 2016, when the team from 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, who had been conducting research on regional integration, borders, and globalization, decided to participate in the VIII CLACSO Call for Proposals for a new Working Group for the 2017-2019 period. This application was approved, and the Working Group remains active in the subsequent 2020-2022 and 2023-2025 calls. With this application, it aims to advance for another three years, reaching greater levels of consolidation and projection.

Throughout the nine years of work, the dimensions of the CLACSO Working Group "Borders, Regionalization and Globalization" (currently 209 members, of which 89 are women and 144 are men) and its presence in 16 countries (3 of them European) and American countries, three of which are priority countries, has meant that despite the difficulties, mechanisms for 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 Working Group, 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 receive minimal institutional support. Therefore, our research activities, especially those conducted with social organizations, are also carried out using the researchers' own resources and, occasionally, with support from the organizations and communities with which we collaborate. 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.

After four congresses held during the GT's existence, the XVII in 2019 in Foz do Iguaçu organized by UNILA, the XVIII in 2021 in La Ceiba by the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the XIX in 2023 in Chilecito, Argentina, led by the National University of Chilecito and the XX currently underway in Chetumal, Mexico, organized by the Autonomous University of Quintana Roo, as well as in local pre-congresses held in Argentina in 2018, 2021 and 2023 or the regional pre-congress of 2025, progress was made in defining seven lines of work for the GT from which the congresses were organized and which will be continued in the organization of the GT's work in the period 2026-2028: 1) Global Spaces and Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation for the expansion of transnational capital in the American Continent; 2) Regional integration, free trade agreements and the global crisis, 3) Development, Megainfrastructure and Megaprojects, 4) Borders in the face of regional integration and globalization, 5) Migration, forced displacement and refuge, 6) Social and environmental movements and experiences of organization and resistance, and 7) Cross-border transculturations

The overall objective of the GT is to analyze how the regions of the United States-Mexico Border; the Mesoamerica Development and Integration Project (Mesoamerica Project); the Eastern Amazon; the Caribbean Basin, the Plata Basin, the Andean-Amazonian region, and Patagonia, have been produced as Global Spaces for the Expansion of Capital, in its transnational accumulation phase, based on 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 increasingly integrated into said expansion, as well as the Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation as territorial configurations that are articulated in and between said spaces. 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 the 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, which we call Specific Zones of Intense Social Conflict.

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 and the Plata Basin, as well as in internal border spaces, are being reconfigured under the globalizing neoliberal perspective, through mechanisms of the hegemony-subordination/ domination-coercion binomial, 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 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 within 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) Associated with b, investigate the forms of organization and experiences of social, indigenous, peasant and community organizations in general that they adopt to deal with the impacts of megaprojects and advances in these escalations of capital, the levels of increasing conflict and militarization of the territories, understood as Specific Zones of Intense Social Conflict.

d) To analyze the forced displacements and migrations carried out within the framework of agreements, geostrategic plans, and the deployment of megaprojects, as well as their encroachment on areas considered most important for these initiatives 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.

e) As an organizational objective, the strengthening of experiences developed and in thematic networks together with other GTs will be promoted.

The theoretical and methodological development of the collective project has been substantial, and a large part of the goals established in the Working Group's successive proposals since 2016 have been achieved. These advances have been presented successively through the participation of our Working Group members in all CLACSO conferences held since 2018, with presentations on specific panels, roundtables, and inter-Working Group forums. Among the latter, the continuation since 2022 of the Inter-Working Group Forum "Territorialities in Struggle, Re-existences, and Defense of Life in the Face of Capitalism, Extractivism, and Multiple Forms of Dispossession" is noteworthy. This forum is expected to continue at the XI CLACSO conference. A new Inter-Working Group Forum, "Studying Violence to Build Peace with Justice: Dialogues between Human Rights and Environmental Defenders and Academics," is also planned for the next CLACSO conference in 2028, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of potential areas of convergence.

The concept of global space was developed from William Robinson's theoretical perspective of global capitalism, which posits that in the current phase of capitalist development, certain strategic zones are being subordinated to territorial supremacy, thus forming an incipient transnational state, as well as an increasingly transnational capitalist class. These are old and new spaces produced through global policies that guide investment decisions in specific and dynamic productive activities (aerospace, automotive, energy and mining transition industries, green finance and land grabbing, artificial intelligence, data centers, industrial complexes, and export platforms, among others) along the Mexico-US border and on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central and South America and the Caribbean. These are complemented by transport, energy and telecommunications corridors and infrastructures, which guarantee both the circulation of goods and information and access to spaces for appropriation/capitalization of nature (energy, minerals, food and cheap labor), as well as mechanisms of control and militarization, and to the extent that they give rise to the development of resistance, to the criminalization of social protest and the repression of peoples and communities.

To analyze the emergence and development of these spaces within the CLACSO Working Group, we have been constructing a method of analysis of 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 Lefebvre; we continue with the analysis of the globalization of production and the financial circuits from which the expansion of transnational capital (Harvey) is carried out for the appropriation and capitalization of nature (Moore) and its configuration as Global Spaces and Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation (Sandoval). This process occurs alongside the centralization of command and control of the global economy in transnational capital (Robinson), and the concentration of this capital (for its management, accumulation, and valorization) requires other global or denationalized spaces such as global cities (Sassen) or special economic zones. We continue with the analysis of uneven geographical development (Smith, Harvey, 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 (Santos).

The progress achieved by this collective project was summarized in a recently published article that includes two maps showing the work of its members in several regions of the continent. Here we reproduce the summary that encapsulates this progress:

The expansion of transnational capital in the American Continent.

Since the end of the 7th century, we have witnessed a new process of expansion—not only extensive but also intensive—of transnational capital. In this process, national production systems are fragmented and dispersed, becoming externally integrated into new, truly globalized circuits of production and accumulation, accompanied by financialization. Simultaneously, a process of concentration and centralization of economic administration, control, and power is taking place, wielded by transnational capital and its agents. Globalized production requires Global Spaces (GS) for accumulation, which are being driven by the Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC) and the decentralized apparatuses of an emerging Transnational State (TS). GS transcend national spaces, which are supplanted by transnational accumulation; and within these spaces, spatial adjustments are made for the deployment and execution of the industrial production process and/or the extraction of surplus. In smaller areas that we have termed Specific Zones of Intense Accumulation (ZEIA), mega-infrastructure projects are concentrated for high-tech, high-value-added industrial production, extractive processes, or a combination of both, through the establishment of a dense network of legal, physical, material, and security infrastructure. The acute tension arising from conflicts within the ZEIA due to the advance of capital in these territories, and the struggles and resistance it faces from local communities, also transforms these ZEIA into Specific Zones of Intense Social Conflict (ZEICS), where the global class struggle is clearly expressed at the local and regional levels. The objective of this work is to analyze how, in the current phase of global capitalism, seven Specific Zones and several ZEIA/ZEICS have been configured in the Americas.