Social Dimensions of Regional Integration - A High Level Symposium: Conclusions

The aim of this symposium was to analyse the social dimensions of regional integration policies. It was suggested that policy orientated social science could help identify the potential advantages for countries of taking further steps towards the development of regional social policies. Increasingly regions might be considered an emerging space between the national and the global for the formulation and implementation of such policies. The context of this focus on the regional level was the absence of a social clause in global economic and financial polices and disagreements between countries as to how to reconcile economic openness with social standards. One strategy to achieve a socially just globalization might be to enhance the role of regions. The symposium was contextualized by two background papers commissioned from the United Nations University (authored by Luk Van Langenhove) and the Globalism and Social Policy Programme (GASPP) authored by Nicola Yeates and Bob Deacon.