Core response 4 (the Global TV week)

I appreciate Michael Curtin’s effort in providing a historical overview of the theoretical transition from media imperialism to media capital with respect to globalization, and more importantly, in further delineating three principles that haven driven the flow of media capital and shaped global media industries. He pays attention to both the general trend (the logic of accumulation & trajectories of creative migration) and specific variations (forces of sociocultural variation), and lays out a valid framework under which we can better think globally.

Nevertheless, after taking a deeper look into each of the principles, I feel some of them need to be refined to speak more of material matters that have been structured within and constantly shifting. When Curtain talks about the creative migration of cultural workers, he uses the cluster of creative resources in particular cities as examples to substantiate the trajectory of these centripetal flows, however, without discerning the national, regional, and global dynamics. That is to say, he assumes a certain sort of evenly distributed way of creative migration at all levels, which is not completely true. Two things to be considered—from the perspective of individual cultural workers and artists, how does the force that drives them to migrate to cultural centers weight as compared to material costs and barricades that bound them locally? There is obviously a class distinction here, and if we borrow ideas from Bourdieu's conception of habitus, we can easily understand how the idea and practice of migration at higher levels might still remain as an unavailable option to people of lower class. Aside from the class dimension, creative migration of workers is more difficult than how the author takes for granted. It is largely contingent upon national policies and laws on immigration. For instance, among all the international graduates of arts in America each year, only a very small portion of them can gain further authorization to work here after a certain period of time. Among the rest, some of them might go back to the creative capitals in their home country and others, to normal locales. In this sense, creative migration is overshadowed by the non-migration of a larger group of cultural workers.  

I'm not arguing against Curtain’s view that there exists this trajectory of creative migration, but I want to shed light upon how this migration is very much class-bound and state-bound, and therefore, does not speak of the larger hidden part of the landscape.