These areas have primarily sprung up in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. These textile, food-processing, electronics, or automobile factories are wholy owned by foreign capital. Young women are bused in or housed in barracks. Working conditions are poor. Union activity is forbidden.
Wages are low.
Sweet deals are often made with the host government. Environmental regulations, when they exist, are primarily ignored. The result is massive profits for the corporations who manage to set up shop in the Zones. This is not because the rich are inherently smarter, or better, or more evil. The outcomes from the north-south relationship are simply the regular workings of capital, the logical result of the international capitalist system.