There is a strong flavour of globalisation running through this section this year. Two of the chapters, by Chris Holden and Nicola Yeates, focus specifically on the significance of globalisation as a process affecting social policy development, while Rosemary Sales’ chapter on European migration and Monica Threlfall's on the EU's developing social policy agenda set their discussions in an increasingly globalised policy context.

The section begins with Holden's chapter which discusses the impact of globalisation on the welfare state as the leading actor in social policy development and, essentially, seeks to rebut the cruder versions of the globalisation thesis which argue for the loss of state autonomy and policy-making power. He draws our attention to what he calls the meso-level of analysis rather than macro-debates about globalisation. After outlining and discussing some of the key approaches to globalisation and social policy, he focuses his analysis on a case study of the relationship between major international private providers of long-term care operating in the UK, and three other key actors: the state, staff and unions, and older people themselves. What his chapter illustrates is that deterministic claims about the loss of state power, at least in this field of social policy provision, are simply not borne out: the state continues to be the key actor in shaping the long-term care sector.

Nicola Yeates’ chapter focuses less on the detailed relationship between globalisation and social policy in specific countries or policy areas, and draws attention more to the growing significance of the ‘anti-globalisation’ movements around the world. In recent years, these movements have become very visible at the various meetings of international organisations when they have discussed economic and social policy. Yeates provides a fascinating examination of these protests and the responses to them and moves on to suggest what the implications of globalisation for social policy are in this context. The chapter reviews recent ‘anti-globalisation’ campaigns and examines the composition and methodologies of the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement. Yeates then focuses on the impact of the movement on social policy through a consideration of state responses to the protests. In the light of both examinations Yeates then suggests what the implications of these popular protests may be for social policy analysis by outlining a new ‘internationalist’ agenda which, she argues, should structure future academic analysis in this area.