Module on GEC3- Contemporary World

Chapter 5 Global Population and Mobility

Module 5: GLOBAL POPULATION AND MOBILITY

The module presents the essence and reality of the global demography. Global
City deals with the concept of Cosmopolitanism and its significance in world politics
and international relations. Global Demography talks about the present condition of
world population in terms of demographic transition. Global Migration covers the
discussions about factors underlying migration and labor export.

Topics:

Global City
Global Demography
Global Migration and Labor Export

Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify the attributes of a global city?

2. Analyze how cities serve as engines of globalization.
3. Explain the theory of demographic transition as it affects global population.
4. Analyze the political, economic, cultural, and social factors underlying the
global movements of people.
5. Display firsthand knowledge of the experiences of OFWs.
6. Explain the cost and benefits of the country’s labor export policy.

Time Frame:

Week 11- 12
Week 13- Midterm Examination

Learning Content:

Words to Go By:

Migrant - a citizen who leaves his/ her country of birth to work or

reside in another country
Refugee - a person who has been forced to flee his/ her country to
escape war, political persecution, catastrophe, natural
disaster, and the like
Remittances -money sent by migrant to their home country
Diaspora - the movement of community of migrants bound by a
common cultural heritage and/ or home country
Agglomeration - benefits enjoyed by businesses and citizens in a place
economies where firms and people conglomerate near one another,
usually in cities and industrial zones
Knowledge -economy in which growth is propelled by the production,
economy dissemination, and processing of information toward
creative innovations, rather than typical industrial mass
production and commodities

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Overview:

The unprecedented volume and speed of human mobility are perhaps the most
conspicuous manifestations of the present era of globalization. From international
tourists to war-displaced refugees, more people are on the move than ever
before. According to United Nations predictions, about half of humanity lives in a city,
and by 2050, it’s likely that 70 percent of the world’s population will be in urban
areas. People would want to move towards the country’s metropolis for reasons that
in the big cities there are increasing concentration of industry expertise, wealth,
technology, and opportunities, and western like-lifestyle. For instance, in the
Philippines, people in the provinces move to Manila to work, build businesses, and/
or pursue their career. Such movements of people resulted in wealth and urban
growth as well as innovations of technologies that facilitate and improve the urban
living experience. Urban living create a new set of transportation, sanitation, and
infrastructure requirements and change the fundamental market dynamics for
companies in a wide variety of industries. New technologies, processes, products, and
engineering solutions are being created to address the unique issues resulting from
the unprecedented rate and scale of urbanization that is happening now. The impact
of urbanization falls into three primary categories. The first is infrastructure, as public
officials and city planners need to build infrastructure to support larger populations
in a sustainable fashion, which private companies will ultimately build and manage.
Second are private development companies, which compete with their peers to build
and manage large dwellings, venues, and facilities that people live, shop, eat, and are
entertained in. The third are consumer products companies that sell goods and
services to people whose consumption patterns are influenced by where and how they
live. Within such context, this chapter will tackle issues on global population and
mobility.

GLOBAL CITY

Val Colic- Peisker identifies being cosmopolitan and post-industrial as the

leading attribute of the global city. By cosmopolitan she means, cultural diversity
detected on the surface as a “cosmopolitan feel” wherein the global city’s natives
encountering and engaging daily with the variety of immigrants and visitors. The
results are cosmopolitan consumption, cosmopolitan work culture, global networking,
and global transnational community relations. She describes the concept of
cosmopolitanism as “a phenomenon most readily associated with the global city: large
and diverse cities, material and cultural products from all over the world. The idea of

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cosmopolitanism usually invokes pleasant images of travel, exploration, and worldly

pursuits. A “consumerist world of malls and supermarkets, theme parks, leisure
centers, and food parks. All are offering a cross-cultural variety of foods, fashion,
entertainments etc. Such cosmopolitanism is present in much of Metro Manila’s
cities- from highly educated, English speaking, young, skilled workers and
professionals to malls selling all sorts of local and imported goods. Races from
different parts of the globe enjoying First World luxuries in a Third World country.

Colic-Peisker also points out another attribute of being post- industrial city
and that is to “stop making thing and switch to handling and shifting money and
ideas. For example, in Singapore, having efficient global transport infrastructure and
growing professional service sector. Singapore’s economic growth and its government
competence in ensuring effective urban planning enabled it to jump to the sixth place
in A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities Index in 2017, the highest ever ranking for the nation
on the index which ranks cities based on their business activity, human capital.
Information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement.

Moreover, Chris Hudson, echoed the categorization of global cities into tiers:
Truly global Cities such as London, New York, and Tokyo, they are on the top of the
hierarchy because of they established the most powerful global financial
articulations. The second tier cities are identified by the level of their multinational
articulations. These cities include Miami, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Amsterdam,
Singapore. The third tier is distinguished by the importance of their National
Articulations and include Paris, Zurich, Madrid, Sydney, and Seoul. And the fourth
tier are identified because of their subnational and regional articulations. These
places are Osaka-Kone and Kansai region in Japan, Hongkong and Pearl River in
Delta region in China.

Furthermore, highlights from the 2019 Kearny Global Cities Report showed
that New York, London, and Paris maintain their decade-long dominance as the top
three cities in the Global Cities Index. London’s steady performance brings it to the
very top of the Global Cities Outlook. San Francisco drops from first to third as
challenger cities outpace the California tech hub in personal well-being and foreign
investment. Predictions about the impact of Brexit have yet to materialize, but
performance across leading European cities has nevertheless stalled. The leading
cities continue to outperform the rest of the cities in attracting and retaining qualified
talent. 2019 results suggest the potential of a transformative shift, with up-and-
coming cities gaining momentum in many areas. Lastly, China proves this point as its
urban areas continue to improve their livability, become more citizen-centric, and
close in on the world’s leading cities.

On the other hand, Saskia Sassen enumerates downsides of everyday life in a

global city:

1) High housing costs

2) Long working hours
3) Competitive and precarious labor market
4) Long commuting times
5) Urban anonymity
6) Relative social isolation
7) Fear of strangers and crime after (or even before) dark
8) Residential hyper-mobility

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9) The challenges of practicing neighborliness and multiculturalism in close

10) propinquity to diverse neighbors.

GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY

Theory of demographic transition hypothesizes that societies typically

transition from periods of high birth and death rates to ears of lower birth and death
rate, as they engage in the process of industrialization from agrarian or pre-industrial
beginnings. Ronald Lee summarizes what happened in the said transition. “Before the
start of the transition, life was short, births were many, growth was slow, and the
population was young. During the transition, first mortality and then fertility
declined, causing population growth rates to accelerate and then to slow again,
moving toward low fertility, long life and an old population”. The transition began
around 1800 with declining mortality in Europe. It has now spread to all parts of the
world and its projected to be completed by 2100. In much of Europe the transition
somehow coincided industrialization (led to the scientific inquiries which helped
improve health care of many citizens), the period between 1760 and 1860.

Demographic Transition Model (Classical vs. Drew Grover Stages)

Classical Drew Grover Stages

Pre- High birth rates and high Stage Population size "remains fairly
transition fluctuating death rates 1 constant"

Early The population starts to Stage A period of modern medicine

transition grow rapidly 2 that helps lower death rates
resulting in rapid population
growth
Late Birth rate starts to Stage Birth rates gradually decrease
Transition decline 3

Post Low birth and low death Stage The birth rate, as well as the
transiton rates 4 death rate, is low. Countries in
this stage "tend to have
stronger economies, higher
levels of education, better
health care, and a higher
proportion of working women
and a fertility rate hovering
around two children per
women"
Aging Fertility rates have fallen Stage The elderly population
Populatio below the replacement of 5 outnumber the young
n two children population in this stage

Demographic transition showed that countries tend to experience population

rises, but they differ in the pace of entering the various stages. For instance, less
economically developed countries (LEDCs)are still at the stage 2 or 3, where the
population continues to increase at high rate. On the other hand, most of the more
economically developed countries (MEDCs) are now at stage 4, that is when high
population is complemented by a low birth rate and a low death rate. Germany have
reached stage 5. It also shows that populations move through the stages of the model,
the gap between birth rate and death rate widens, then narrows. In stage 1, the two

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rates are balanced. In stage 2, they diverged, as the death rate falls relative to the
birth rate. Finally, in stage 4, the death and birth rate balanced again but at a much
lower level. Such trend for LEDCs and MEDCs partly explain why people tend to
equate industrialization and development with the demographic transition. As Mapa
explains, the transition has potential dividends as demographic transition results in
higher per capita income due to higher productivity as large percentage of population
join the work force, shifting of government expenditures from education and health
services into investment that promotes growth; individuals are saving in their working
years to serve as a buffer during their retirement years; when society increases its
saving rate, this result in rapid economic growth, creating the second demographic
dividend. As Mapa concludes, the Philippines can only benefit from the demographic
transition if a lower fertility rate is achieved. With lesser births, the country’s
population will start to stabilize, and the government will be available to maximize
resources for all citizens. Livi-Bacci also asserts that the trend of the demographic
transition is not set in stone and can be disrupted by some factors like man-made
disasters, deadly disease, rising cost of the health care system, and demographic
aging.

Moreover, Livi-Bacci analysis reveals that the demographic transition’s trend

towards aging population needs to be addressed by governments around the world as
the now-slimming younger generations will have to pay for the pensions and health
care of the increasing older generations. Migration may help resolve these issue;
skilled and professional migrants from populous Third World countries can help
alleviate the shortage of labor workforce in the aging population of the First World
societies while at the same time helping lift the quality of living of their families back
home. The eight countries with low-fertility rates are France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, UK and the US.

GLOBAL MIGRATION AND LABOR EXPORT

The factors that influence the global migration include socio-political,

economic, and ecological factors. Socio-political factors involve ethnic, religious,
racial, and cultural persecution. Economic factors that drive people to migrate
include poverty and lack ample job opportunities and social mobility in the Third
World and First World corporate for cheap labor. Economic migrants are drawn
towards international migration because of the prospect of higher wages and better
employment opportunities. Ecological factors, migrants who were severely impacted
by changing ecological conditions may choose to migrate from their home state in
search of more favorable environmental conditions elsewhere.

In the Philippines, migration started to become an upward trend during 1970,

after Marcos regime institutionalized the country’s labor export policy (LEP) through
Presidential Decree (PD) 442 known as the Labor Code of 1974. Book 1 Article 12 of
the said decree outlines the policy of the state with regard to labor, which includes
strengthening “the network of pubic employment offices and rationalize the
participation of private sector in recruitment and placement of workers, locally and
overseas, to serve national development objectives and ensuring careful selection of
Filipino workers for overseas employment. Within this context, the LEP was initially
regarded as a stopgap measure to reduce the country’s high unemployment rate. The
Philippines provides the Third highest number of staff in United Kingdom’s much-
praised National Health Service. Overall, 12 744, Filipino Health Workers contribute
to the sector. LEP brings valuable foreign currency remittances to the Philippines and
has become some sort of an economic lifesaver of the Philippines, but its financial

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benefits should be partly used for the highly important industrial sector so as to take
advantage of the country’s vast natural resources and skilled human resources.
However, the threat of deskilling (mismatch of job) of migrant labor in many
immigration countries may be viewed as one of the negative impacts labor export.

Aware of the threat of brain drain, deskilling, and other social cost (broken
marriages, sexual immortality, psychological breakdown, school-drop outs, and
suicide) on the families of the OFW, Filipinos still consider migration as an option to
improve their quality of life given the country’s poverty rate remaining high and its’
unemployment rate being worst in Southeast Asia having 36.8%.

Guide Questions for Discussion:

1. How does population boom affect the country’s transportation system and
housing markets?
2. What attributes of the global city does Metro Manila reflect?
3. Why do some academics link global cities with colonialism?
4. How does outsourcing promote the growth of prospective global cities?
5. In your opinion, can the Philippines reap the dividends of demographic
transition? Why or why not?
6. What are the positive and negative impacts of the labor export policy to the
Philippines?

Learning Task 9: Essay Writing

Write a 1-page essay titled Diaspora and Globalization: The Political, Economic,
Cultural and Social Factors Underlying Movements of People.

Module 5 References:

Primary Source:

San Juan, David Michael M. Journeys Through Our Contemporary World.

Quezon City: Vibal Group, Inc., 2018.

Electronic Source:

Skeldon, Ronald. Global Migration: Demographic Aspect and Its Relevance for
Development , Technical Paper No.2013/6.United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs,
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/tech
nical/TP2013-6.pdf

Roemers, Martin. Living in the New, May04, 2012.The New York Times,
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/living-in-the-new-
metropolis.html

Boyd, Bret. Urbanization and the Mass Movement of People to Cities: Human
Migration Pattern, The official website of Grayline,
https://graylinegroup.com/urbanization-catalyst-overview/

Kearneys, The 2019 Global Cities Report, “A question of talent: how human capital will determine

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the next global leaders”. The official website of Kearney,

https://www.kearney.com/global-cities/2019.

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