Offshore

Abstract

Offshore capitalist spaces have mushroomed in importance since the mid-20th century. Offshore financial centres (OFCs) are frequently presented as exotic, with images of tropical beaches and palm trees dotting business brochures and how-to guides. Most offshore geographies are imperial geographies, in history and function. Special economic zones (SEZs), along with outsourcing in general, replaced more blatant colonial labour exploitation with a liberal market-based version for the post-colonial era. Offshore spaces remain imperialist in their extractive function: channeling wealth from less to more powerful people and places. SEZs are sites for intensified extraction of labour power and cheap materials, while OFCs facilitate the extraction of capital from everywhere “else” through tax avoidance, capital flight and more. Historians, political scientists and journalists of the offshore tend to agree, first, that the offshore is central, not marginal, to globalisation, and second, that it is closely linked to neoliberal capitalism.