LESSON 4

GLOBALIZATION
POPULATION
AND MOBILITY
TOPICS
1. The Global City
2. Global Demography
3. Global Migration

LEARNING OUTCOMES :
At the end of the lesson, students should:
1. Identify the attributes of a global city. Analyze how cities serve as
engines of globalization.
2. Explain the theory of demographic transition as it affects the global
population.
3. Analyze the political, economic, cultural, and social factors
underlying the global movements of people. Display first-hand
knowledge of the experiences of OFWs.
SOURCE: KEARNEY 2020 GLOBAL CITIES REPORT
We constantly note that globalization has paved
the way for the increasing integration and
interconnection of economies, political structures,
cultures, and peoples from all over the world.

Globalization has established both international

and transnational institutions and social structures.
Because globalization is ‘global’ we assume that it
is embodied by the whole world—like the entirety
of the earth.
The conception of the ‘global city’ answers to the
character of globalization as a spatial phenomenon
because it occurs in physical spaces and because its
movements are based in places (Claudio & Abinales,
2018: 84).

The increase in skyscrapers seen in the horizon, the

movement of people to the cities for work, studies, or
leisure, and the conditions by which the poor are
displaced outside the city to give way to ‘progress’
manifest the idea that globalization—although global in
scope—its entirety can be seen in the unit of a city.
For Claudio and Abinales (2018), “cities act on
globalization and globalization acts on cities.
They are sites of as well as the mediums of
globalization. Just as the internet enables and
shapes global forces, so too do cities.”

In connection to this, Colic-Piesker (2014)

argues that the idea of a ‘global city’ “has a
central place in understanding contemporary
spatial patterns of globalization.”
CHARACTERIZING THE GLOBAL CITY (Claudio & Abinales, 2018; Colic-
Peisker, 2014)

 The global city is the main physical and geographic context of globalizing
forces, the global flow of people, capital, and ideas are interconnected in
the daily experiences of its residents.

 The global city represents and contains the world in a bounded space.

 Global cities are hubs of innovation, creativity, and productivity. Global

cities are financial centers, with great concentration of geopolitical
power, cultural powerhouses, and higher education hubs and creative
industries.
 For sociologist Saskia Sassen (1991), the
most defining characteristic is economic
power, which largely determines which
cities are global. According to Sassen, global
cities are the “command centers”, the main
spaces of triumphant global capitalism.

E.g. New York has the largest stock market;

there are 613 company headquarters in Tokyo;
the biggest container port in the world is found
in Shanghai.
 According to the Global Power City Index by the Japanese Mori
Foundation, the global power of cities is measured through six criteria:

a. Economy
b. Research and development
c. Cultural interaction
d. Liveability
e. Environment
f. Accessibility
Moreover, according to the Index, there is a sense
of “magnetism” by which global cities deserve
their status: a comprehensive power to attract
creative people and excellent companies from
around the world. Similar to Moretti (2012), global
cities represent “brain hubs” that have
concentrations of innovative people and firms, has
good “human ecosystems” for businesses, and
provides support functions or “secondary
services” for innovators.
 The ‘things’ produced in global cities are not material,
they are immaterial such as ideas and knowledge. This
“symbolic economy” based on abstract products like
financial instruments, information, and popular culture
(arts, fashion, music, etc.) has increasing importance as
manufacturing companies move out of cities into slum
cities in Third World countries.

 Economic opportunities in a global city attract talents

from across the world. E.g. IT programmers and
engineers from Asia moved to San Francisco and
became key figures in Silicon Valley’s technological
boom.
 Global cities are characterized by occupational and income
polarization, with the highly paid professionals on one end and
providers of low-paid skill services on the 59 other. This
condition continually reimagines social classes, income
distribution, and the labor market, and perpetuates the
inherent inequality in globalization.

 Global cities are centers of authority and in some instances,

centers of political influence. E.g. Washington D.C. is America’s
seat of state power; United Nations’ headquarters in New
York; headquarters of ASEAN in Jakarta
 Global cities are centers of higher learning
and cultural experiences. They attract
international students. E.g. Harvard
University in Boston; the American film
industry in Los Angeles; Singapore’s
cultural hub.

 The cultural power of global cities ties

them to the imagination. I.e. references in
songs and films deliver a message of a
“greater pasture” in global cities,
persuading people to move into one.
 Global cities are melting pots for cultural diversity, as
a consequence of human mobility and migration. I.e.
presence of foreign population either for work,
education, or tourism purposes.

 Globalization has created the global labor market,

leading to an increase in transnational mobility and
migration of people coming from different places into
the global cities.

 The “magnetism” of global cities is not only for the

creative and innovative professionals and firms but
also for other necessary workers (those in the low-
skilled, poorly paid service sector).
 CHARACTERISTICS OF A GLOBAL CITY
( LONGHORN, 2015)

 ECONOMIC ATTRIBUTE
 POPULATION SIZE
 HUMAN CAPITAL
 CULTURE
 TOURISTS
 CONNECTIVITY
 QUALITY OF LIFE
UNDERSIDES OF THE GLOBAL CITY (Claudio &
Abinales, 2018: 89-92)

 Global cities can be sites of great inequality,

poverty, and violence—these spaces create
winners and losers.

 Among the most profound downsides of everyday

life in a global city are high housing costs, long
working hours, competitive labor market, long
commuting time, discrimination and racism, loss of
sense of community which promotes greater
individuality among neighbors and residents.
Environmental aspect:

a. Cities like Singapore and Tokyo with dense population and

extensive public transportation systems have lower carbon
footprints , environmentally sustainable

b. Cities like Manila and Bangkok with dense population and no

extensive public transportation coupled with unregulated car
industries lead to a high level of pollution , environmentally
unsustainable

c. Cities consume the most energy

Socio-political aspect:

- Cities are targeted for major terrorist attacks

because of their high population, global
influence, and their embodiment of
globalization.

E.g. 9/11 attack in New York

Economic aspect:

- Today, it is common to find towering buildings

alongside shantytowns housing the urban poor
population.
- Cities are now becoming the same mechanism that
drives out and displaces the poor, in favor of wealthier
people (gentrification).
- The number of middle-class population is decreasing
as the binary socio- economic divide between the rich
and the poor widens.
More on global city:
Global Cities - Full Documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=V4oMnmu47Q&t=68s)  Urbanisation and the growth of global cities
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpBbnL3pMRA)
 Issues Illustrated: Global Cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=2x8zmA9RYrM)
 Saskia Sassen | Global Cities (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ZP2VE7ptKjI&t=91s)  Urbanization and the future of cities - Vance
Kite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKnAJCSGSdk)
 How to Make an Attractive City (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=Hy4QjmKzF1c&t=104s) S
A POSTCARD FROM THE GLOBAL CITY:

Because most global cities attract creative and innovative people

from around the world, capitalize on your creative juices for this
activity. Create a collage depicting the essence of a global city. It is
up to you if you will focus on the bright side of the city lights or the
undersides in the dark alleys or shantytowns of the metro. You are
free to use any illustration style (you can draw or paint) and
materials in your postcard, you can even do this digitally. The
postcard size is 5 (L) x 7 (W) inches, so you have to customize the
paper you will use. Your postcard can be in portrait or landscape
orientation.

TASK/ACTIVITY RUBRICS: Artistic elements (design, art style,

medium): 20% Creativity: 30% Narrative, theme, ideas and/or ideals
forwarded through the postcard: 50%
TOPIC 2: GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
In the unit of the family, parents have different
motivations for having children which are highly
influenced by their contexts and cultures. For families
living in rural, agricultural communities, having many
children is advantageous because all are expected to
be additional hands in tending the farm and the kinship
will be beneficial in keeping the familial ties together.
In contrast to urban, educated, and professional families
who will choose to have just one or two children
because the couples are tied down to their careers. In
these cases, different perspectives on family-hood or
family life have significant effects on a country’s
demography. Nowadays, “having or not having children
is mainly driven by economic” (Claudio & Abinales,
2018: 96).
The movements of people to urban
areas and/or global cities are marking
significant changes in demography as
well. As people move to the cities for
work, studies, and other reasons,
population count and human density in
cities with small land-area spike up. In a
similar case, international migration has
been an omnipresent force in relation to
globalization and its influence on the
human population.
DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION

In his article, The Demographic Transition: Three Centuries of

Fundamental Change, Ronald Lee (2003) traced and discussed
the dramatic demographic transition in three centuries by taking a
comparative lens on different demographic aspects (mortality
declines, fertility transition, population growth, and shifts in age
distribution) from cases and data of three categories of countries
(Most Developed Countries, Less Developed Countries, and
Least Develop Countries).
For Lee (2003), there are temporal phases of demographic
transition, which are the pre-demographic transition phase and
the actual demographic transition period. Lee (2003) characterized
the two phases.
According to Lee (2003), “[t]his demographic transition
has brought momentous changes, reshaping to economic
and demographic life cycles of individuals and
restructuring populations” (p. 167).

These shifts in population conditions indicated above are

shaped by changes that influenced significant fluctuations
in the human population itself. In addition, the “classic
demographic transition” begins with mortality decline,
then a time of reduced fertility, resulting in an interval of
increased and decreased population growth, and
population aging as the culmination (Lee, 2003: 170).
ASPECTS OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION (Lee, 2003)

a. Mortality Declines
- Reduction in contagious and infectious diseases due to developments in
preventive medicine and public health measures.
- Improved personal hygiene.
- Improvements in nutrition. Better-nourished populations with stronger
organ systems were better to resist disease.
- Improvements in the storage and transportation of regional and local food
items.
- Increases in income improved nutrition in childhood and throughout life.
- Reduction in chronic and degenerative diseases, i.e. heart disease and
cancer.
- Publicly organized and funded biomedical research has played an
increasingly important part.
Fertility Transition

- Some improvement in child survival is a response to parental decisions to

invest more in the health and welfare of a smaller number of children.

- Fertility will also be influenced by how economic change influences the costs
and benefits of childbearing.

- Rising incomes have shifted consumption from nonagricultural goods and

services to educated labor.

- Parents with higher incomes choose to devote more resources to each child;
with a high cost for each child, parents choose to have fewer children.
Population Growth –
Population growth is determined by the combination of fertility and
mortality.
- According to United Nation’s trajectory forecast and prediction, the
global population will reach 8.9 billion by 2050 and just below 9.5 billion
by 2100— currently, we are at 7.8 billion people in the whole world.

d. Population Aging - Both low fertility and longer life contribute to the
aging of the population. - When population aging is due to declining
fertility, it raises the share of the elderly population without altering the
remaining life expectancy of older individuals. - Population aging due to
declining mortality is generally associated with increasing health and
improving the functional status of the elderly.
THE PERILS AND CONTROL-MECHANISMS OF
OVERPOPULATION

The current figures when it comes to the global population are at 7.8
billion people in the whole world. As the trajectory of population
growth leans more on the increasing size for the next 50 or 100
years, the current problem with overpopulation will heighten. As the
number of people increases, the perils of overpopulation loom.

Claudio and Abinales (2018) have discussed some of these ‘perils’

and prospective solutions governments can take to ‘control’ their
population growth:
1. Overpopulation will bring about the environmental degradation that will
lead to food shortage and massive starvation. There is a growing sense
of global food
insecurity.
2. The free expansion of family members would lead to a crisis in
resources, which
may result in widespread poverty, mass hunger, and political instability.
3. Advocates of population control push for universal access to
reproductive
technologies (condoms, pills, abortion, and vasectomy) and giving
women the
right to choose whether to have children or not.
PHILIPPINE DEMOGRAPHIC DATA

Presented is the current demographic data of the Philippines. The data are
mainly sourced from Worldometer and Philippine Statistics Authority.
 The Philippines 2020 population is estimated at 109,581,078 people at
mid-year according to UN data.
 The Philippines population is equivalent to 1.41% of the total world
population.
 The Philippines ranks number 13 in the list of countries (and
dependencies) by population.
 The population density in the Philippines is 368 per Km2 (952 people per
mi2).
 The total land area is 298,170 Km2 (115,124 sq. miles)  47.5 % of the
population is urban (52,008,603 people in 2020)
 The median age in the Philippines is 25.7 years.
Demographic forecasts and predictions indicate an
increasing trajectory of the Filipino population for the
next thirty years. With our existing institutional crises,
failing governmental policies and programs, rampant
poverty and hunger, increasing unemployment rate,
decreasing purchasing power of the poor,
environmental degradation, the continuing trend of
the population will pose challenges and problems at
intersecting and multilevel dimensions.
We will start to ask how we are going to
feed additional million mouths, how are we
going to accommodate more people in our
limited land area, how do we mitigate the
tendency to move past our carrying
capacity, and how do we assure the next
generations that they can still live securely
Global demography is a broad topic which draws a lot
of data and analyses from different disciplines in the
social sciences, data sciences, and statistics.
Globalization will continue to have a huge impact on
human populations, mobility, migration, and related
conditions. Aside from the challenges of making
globalization more just and capable of upholding
interstate and global harmony, making the results of
the processes more humane and mindful of different
human conditions should be considered as well.
TOPIC 3: GLOBAL MIGRATION
 Global migration, or the process of migration in general, is
seen as another product of the increasing interaction and
interconnection of peoples, structures, and systems brought
by globalization. People can move from one country to
another.

 Migration is an intersection of economic, political, sociological,

and anthropological processes and conditions that pushes or
pulls people toward the idea and action of moving or migrating
to another place.
 The movement of people under globalization processes
is inevitable. Humans are migratory beings. Similar to
birds that migrate to warmer areas during winter to
survive, the motivations of human beings to migrate are
partly for the sake of survival as well. However, what
differentiates the migratory human with the migratory
bird is that migration is not solely for surviving but for
numerous humanistic motives driven by very complex
human conditions.
WHAT IS MIGRATION?

In definition, migration refers to the

temporary or permanent movement of
people from one place to another.
According to Claudio and Abinales
(2018), there are two types of
migration: internal migration and
international migration (broken down
into five groups).
 According to Ronald Skeldon (2012),
some persistent views about migration
include the idea that the movement of
people are somehow fixed to the
circumstance that poor people (from
Third World countries) will always come
to the richer cities (global city) or in First
World countries of the global north.
Ronald Skeldon Moreover, international migration is
more rampant than internal migration.
The case of the Oversees Filipino
Workers (OFWs), they are part of the
international labor market from a Third
World country (the Philippines), these
OFWs move to other countries in hopes
of better jobs and source of income
(economic reasons). Most OFWs work
in the Middle East, East Asia, the
United States, and Europe among
others.
REASONS FOR MIGRATION
 Economic – better economic opportunities in terms of jobs, income and
compensation, and working conditions.

 Geopolitical – migration to other countries to seek asylum and become refugees

to avoid geopolitical conflicts like war, governmental atrocities, and police and
military brutality, and persecution among others.

 Institutional – moving to other countries because of their better societal and civil
welfare conditions, i.e. better government, healthcare services, education, and
there’s peace.

 Environmental – migration to other countries with greater food security,

sustainable development, and less environmental and climatic disasters.
 Nation-states have different takes on migration. Not every
state is willing to usher in migrant workers, many have strict
state policies in ensuing that foreigners will not easily enter
their territories and commit international violations and/or
crimes.
 In the part of the migrating people, they still face
discrimination from the citizens of their host country in terms
of their work (the blue- and white-collar jobs divide), cultural
and linguistic differences, and a sense of intensified
exclusion and “othering” among others.
Global migration has its fair share of beneficial and
detrimental results. As it manifests and pushes forward
greater globalizing processes in economic, political, and
cultural levels the challenge in terms of the movements of
people around the world or locally is how to ensure that
the migrants are safe from abuse, oppression, and
discrimination. On a greater scale, making globalization
just in all economic, political, cultural, and human
population and movement aspects remains the biggest
challenge.