> Can you be more specific? What do you mean by semi-peripheries?
Countries which do have significant urbanization and modernization, including large-scale manufacturing, but are still restricted to middle levels of technology, R & D, science, and education. E.g. Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Poland, coastal China, urban Vietnam -- zones with per capita GDP of 2,000 to 5,000 EUR.
> seems like the overall plan is to leverage as much as they can out of
> the old socialist-funded infrastructure and human capital -- that is,
> buy what's profitable for nothing including the very well-educated
> people, use the threat of the humble east european worker to frighten
> the west-european worker into giving up as much as possible,
> let infrastructure and social services decline (both east and west)...
> and laugh all the way to the bank.
That was the neoliberal plan. But it foundered on the reality that Eastern Europe, after 50 years of subtly tweaking autarkic Plans to suit their own interests, found it was easy to do the same thing to the neoliberal Plan. Out with the apprentice, in with the master, as a certain insurgency-we-could-all-name put it. The EIB has some good stats (http://www.eib.org/) and the fine folks at CEE Bankwatch (http://www.bankwatch.org/) have info here: http://www.bankwatch.org/publications/studies/2004/eu_casestudies_06-04.pdf
-- DRR