Observers and students of globalization struggle with two questions. Why 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 relatively wealthy people of the north shore, who are engaged with Europe and modernized, and their poorer neighbours to the south, who strive daily to meet the same standards of living and modes of governance as their more...