Globalization includes complex processes, easy to identify but difficult to explain. Why, for instance, are globalizing processes so unevenly distributed between poor and wealthy countries? What effect does this uneven distribution have on the everyday lives of ordinary people?

The contributors to this volume find answers to these questions in the Mediterranean, a region divided between the people of the north shore, who are engaged with Europe and modernized, and their poorer neighbours to the south, who struggle daily to atain the same standards of living and modes of governance as their more Westernized neighbours. In these two regions’ divergent histories, economies, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, education systems, and political structures lead to explanations not only for uneven globalization but also for the wave of demonstrations for political and cultural autonomy that sparked the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Near East.

Translated by: Käthe Roth