文档介绍：Review of International Political Economy 6:4 Winter 1999: 565–608
The North American Free Trade
Agreement, emerging apparel
works and industrial
upgrading: the southern California/
Mexico connection
Judi A. Kessler
University of California, Santa Barbara
ABSTRACT
The processes of globalization and trade regionalization are creating new
forms of regional concentration of economic activities both within and
across sovereign borders. The passage of the North American Free Trade
Agreement has spawned cross-border strategic production alliances that
impact economic development at both the subnational and transnational
levels. This article examines the southern California/Mexico transnational
apparel work: NAFTA-era bi-national production alliances
that are reconguring strategic apparel production districts, as well as the
larger North American modity chain.
Using modity chains framework, I analyze the importance of
NAFTA as an intervening variable in the economic integration of North
America’s textile/apparel sector; the extent to which southern California
apparel production has shifted offshore to Mexico; and the characteristics
of post-NAFTA strategic production alliances. From this discussion I
address more fundamental issues of economic development, namely how
cross-border changes in the mix of high- and low-value production activ-
ities have recongured the southern California fashion and apparel
production center, and garment-specic industrial clusters in Mexico, and
enhanced the prospects for industrial upgrading in Mexico.
KEYWORDS
Apparel production; California; commodity chains; development; Mexico;
NAFTA.
Review of International Political Economy
ISSN 0969-2290 print/ISSN 1466-4526 online © 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd
REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
INTRODUCTION
Apparel production, a traditional start-up industry in the transition to
an industry-based economy, is the most internati