Multi-national corporations are counting on the disparity to essentially play arbitrage with labour. Nationalism feeds into that, so it's in their interest to stoke nationalist sentiments.
"Nationalism" usually means something stronger than the existence of nations, such as "the belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals".
Restrictions on the free flow of people are not a binary decision. Countries in the Schengen Area which have almost completely given up the ability restrict movement between their territory and 25 other nations are not restricting the movement of people as much as say North Korea which doesn't even let most of its own citizens travel abroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
And it seems to me that it's that lack of "nationalism" as you've defined it that's helping US-based companies exploit cheap labor in (or from) other nations.
And of course, restrictions on freedom of movement can't be summed up exclusively with number of immigrants. There are many countries that are much, much easier to get into than the US; people just don't want to go there as much. And of course, nationalism isn't exclusively border control. That is just one nationalistic behavior.
If you're intentionally misinterpreting me, this discussion isn't going anywhere. But in the hope that that's not the case, I'll try again:
What country offers freedom of movement to the most people? The US, by far.
The freedom to move from France to Germany, or from California to New York, has nothing to do with the freedom of movement of people born outside those systems.
The constituent countries in the EU are still sovereign countries. Unlike US states, they are free to leave at any time.
The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?
Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone.
Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people.
In the Vatican, for example, a given person either has a 100% chance of migration or a 0% chance. Israel has similar numbers. In the Schengen area, it's either a 100% chance or a very small chance.
Update:
Perhaps this will be clearer. Every free country grants total freedom of movement to some group of people. In Israel, this is Jewish people. In the United States, US citizens. In the Schengen area, citizens of the Schengen area.
What does that have to do with nationalism? Nationalism is a distinction between the treatment of in-group people and out-group people.
In the Schengen area, people from the Schengen area are the in-group.
Changing loyalty to a larger nation isn't the same as becoming less nationalistic.
It doesn't even have a shared government to try to make it fit if you are trying to use "nation" as a synonym for "country". Most of the countries are part of the EU, but Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are part of the Schengen Area but not the EU.
Are you saying Europeans don't have any descent, history, or culture in common?
There are some groups of countries that have some descent and culture in common like Portugal/Spain or Benelux or Scandinavia, but there is no pan-European culture. Portugal, Greece, Monaco, Latvia and Iceland have almost nothing in common.
Spain is a lot closer to Morocco than to Norway, but Spain partnered with Norway rather than Morocco because they share the same descent (European) and culture (Christian).
I’d say the idealistic nationalist sees each nation akin to a cell in a cellular automaton and believes that each nation looking after itself in the context of some fundamental rules will achieve better outcomes globally, not just locally, than heavy handed large scale top down control, aka empire.
Taleb cogently argues that scale is of fundamental importance to understanding human behavior. I also accept the argument that distributed local control is generally to be preferred.
Multinationals are almost all in favour of open borders.
They want a) cheap labour and some, good companies need b) high end talent. The later is more rare though.
Every big company I know is 'pro migration' I can't think of a single one that's against it.
Google is more in favour of getting 'highly skilled' people, while most others are in favour of 'bodies' for cheap labour. Companies that are allowed to think long term, like large banks, want migration because 'adding bodies' is the only way most Western economies actually grow. So in Canada, CIBC, BMO, RBC (i.e. big banks) make their $ from mortgages and small business lending - there's no real way for them to grow other than 'more mortgages'. So they push for more bodies as part of national strategy.
Because most political entities, most big business, and a lot of social activists are globalist in nature, it creates a friction with other groups.
This friction is actually a big deal and is reshaping the political landscape in the entire Western world.
It's getting to be less about left/right than it is those with a globalist view and those with a more localist view. 'Nationalists' tend to fall in the later camp.
Given that wages in India and other places are clearly artificially depressed, or people wouldn't want to come to the US, I don't think it's obvious that the multinationals do want open borders. I think it's in the interest of workers though.
I would also add that it's wrong to assume that just because an immigrant was hired for a highly skilled job that automatically means there is a native somewhere with an equivalent skillset and able to do the job as well. It boggles the mind how some people assume that somehow every single top expert in the field happens to live in the same city/state/country where a job opening is published.
Average wages for immigrants is lower than the non-immigrant average in almost all societies.
Because we are in high-tech, we think about 'Google' bringing in great talent, which is good ...
But for most, it's not remotely that.
In Canada, in the Oil Sands, they push for migration and the term they use is 'high labour input cost'. Literally high wages.
So yes, in the long term migration can be good depending on a nations actual need and ability to make use of people, but it's about wages and Supply and Demand there.
It's a similar story everywhere. I don't think anyone, even hardcore nationalists are pushing to get rid of bringing in talented people, the numbers are small. And the issue with H1B for example is not so much the nature of it, but that it was kind of being abused by Infosys etc. in the eyes of some.
"Given that wages in India and other places are clearly artificially depressed, or people wouldn't want to come to the US"
No, this is not any kind of 'artificial depression'. India has a fundamentally different economy than the US. Those differences are not artificial.
The labor market is not national or local for a multinational company. Hence, as I wrote, if people are being underpaid in some countries, it is in a multinational's interest to keep them in those countries to exploit, and not let them immigrate to where they could make more money.
Rules that we have defined to protect the environment in which we live, safety of the products we use, security/privacy of our data.
All of that gets arbitraged away, just like offshore havens are used to hide dirty cash behind veils of various legal stuctures.
How?
It seems to me that multiculturalism if anything leads to more tensions as it seeks to add more groups that don't have as much in common as the people already there.
http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/erik-loomis-the-dem...
Yes, there was a play arbitrage with labor, but nationalism never feed into that because it was all inside one country.
Multinationals would prefer to get rid of all nationality, ethnicity, religion, culture, political ideology etc - it stands in the way of their bottom line.
Strong nations can stand up to big corps.
Strong cultures make it difficult to 'define consumer behaviour' - example: in Europe, American companies have a difficult time selling some consumer products because Europeans 'have their own way' of doing things. Why do you think Starbucks doesn't have a lot of stores in Italy? Because Italians don't care for it - they do their own thing.
This is kind of ugly - but there is a kind of 'culturally secular left' and a 'big / globalist business right' that actually get a long quite well - they both want to get rid of what they view as 'outdated norms'. The left wants to re-write social structure, the right wants to re-write consumption, consumerism and define our aspirations.
I'm not being conspiratorial, it's not like there's a cabal of evil globalists pulling strings, it's just overall in the best interest of these groups. BigCos tend to promote policies which benefit them - not the local population. Shareholders just don't think or care that much about people or culture.
Most corporations (I can't think of any counter examples, but maybe someone here will find one) are all on board with abolishing borders. It makes the most sense from the POV of a capitalistic institution since it drives down wages and increases efficiency much more than strong national borders and "nationalism" would. (Wouldn't your local tech giant like an unlimited supply of work visas to pass out like candy?)
It seems to me that open borders and pro-globalization activists are mostly playing right into the wildest dreams of corporate robber barons. Who prefer the "race to the bottom" WRT labor costs that is "globalism."