CONTEMPORARY WORLD

UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

Introduction
The idea of “global city” has a place in understanding contemporary spatial
patterns of globalization; the ways it impacts on local life is nowhere more visible
than in the global city. The global city therefore is the main physical and
geographic playground of the globalizing forces; population concentration and
mixing, the global flows of people, capital and ideas woven into the daily lived
experiences of its residents.

Therefore, global city can be a vision or scary. It attracts migrants and visitors but
it does not accept all newcomers with the same welcome and it does not treat
all its residents with the same benevolence. Scampering business people and
highly paid professionals maybe living a diverse dream at least in short episode
while mostly hidden from sight in the global city are its marginal dwellers; sweat
shop workers, poorly paid labor in the grey economy, asylum seekers,
undocumented immigrants, women trafficked for sex work, drug dealers and
addicts and the homeless.

Global city are hubs of innovation, creativity and productivity and the creators of
new trends and fashions but also concentrations of demi-monde and social ills of
all kinds.

This chapter focuses on the issues of mobility, diversity and community.it discusses
the diversity of intercultural contact and demographic variety.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of this unit, you are expected to:

1. analyze the effects of living in a global city;
2. discuss the importance of demography in relation to globalization; and,
3. identify the cause and effect of global migration.

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UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:

 define Global City;
 identify the advantages and disadvantages of living in a global city;
 enumerate reasons why people prefers to live in a global city/or in a
countryside and,
 determine the role of global city in the world economy.

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT
WHAT IS “GLOBAL CITY”?

It is barely surprising that the idea of “global city” emerged in the social science.
Literature in the 1980’s, shortly after the concept of globalization captured the
social scientific imagination, becoming one of its powerful notional gravitational
pulls. However, the idea of global city was hardly new at the time, and as a
phenomenon Global cities, either as centers of imperial powers or free cities at
the crossroads o International merchant routes, existed since ancient times.

What therefore is the “global city” a global city is characterized by its strength in
shaping, economic, social and cultural links to the rest of the world including its
ability to influence the flow of resources, capital, innovations and knowledge. The
effects of global city and reasons why we want to live in a global city are:

The world top most influential cities: London, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo,
Hongkong, Dubai, Beijing. A global city is a city that has the power to affect global
issues and change the global outlook. It can be done through varied set of
systems from politics to military and economic controlling and adapting the route
the global economy takes. A world city is a city that is a major centre for finace,
trade, business, politics, culture, science Information gathering and mass media.
It is one that serves the whole world and can be considered and important
multinational city. The safest cities around the world are; Toronto, Canada,
Melbourne, Australia, Amsterdam, Sydney, Stockholm, Sweden, Hongkong,
Zurich, Switzerland; Frankfurt, Germany. A global city is also called world city,
alpha city or world center. The main characteristics of a global city are economic
power. It is therefore correct that economic power determines which among the
cities are considered global city. New York may have the largest stock market
and Shanghai may have the smallest stock market but plays a vital role in the
global economic chain since China became the manufacturing center of the
world. Economic opportunities in a global city make it very attractive to people
across the world. Filipino nurses, engineers, IT programmer, etc. prefers to work in
other countries due to better pay, better benefits and better work environment.

There are measurements of economic competitiveness of a city, like market size,

purchasing power of citizen, size of the middle class and a potential for growth
for that particular City. Global cities are centers of higher learning and culture.
Many people wanted to visit a city for a reason, like if you want to go to Boston,
you want to visit the world top university, Harvard University, Australia for its leading
English language universities, Los Angeles for Center of the American film industry,

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UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

Singapore, it houses some of the region’s top television stations and news
organizations, art galleries and cinemas. Today, global cities become culturally
diverse, conjure up images of a fast-paced lifestyles, they can be sites of great
inequality, poverty and violence, global cities can create winners and losers. But
in most global cities, globalization creates high income jobs that are
concentrated in global cities. A large global city may be a paradise to many
people but can also be a hell to some.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:
 discuss the theory of demographic transition as it affects global
population;
 identify the effects of overpopulation and aging population and
 make a comparison of population base on factors such as age, race,
sex, etc. among countries in Asia through a graphical presentation.

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT
Differences in family determine economic and social policies that countries
dexterity regarding their respective population. Having a child is a manifestation
of a complete family, but how many children should you bear?

Having a child or no child is motivated by economics. Will the child be an asset

or a liability to the family, community or to the nation?

In the rural areas, there are families who have more children because their
mentality is that their children are their wealth there will be more to work in the
fields and there might be one of them who will succeed and change their
economic life.

In the cities, they have less children because they have to be sure of the
education of their children and there is a high standard of living in the cities
therefore they consider how far their income can go.

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UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

”Population changes over time.” The growth or decline of a population can have
an effect on the quality of life for people within that population. Demography is
the statistical study of population based on factors such as age, race and sex.
Governments, corporations and non- government organization use
demographics to learn more about a population’s characteristics for many
purposes including policy development and economic market research.

Substantial definitions of demography, types of demographics, trends and

patterns will be discussed. Different views and data will be presented. The students
will be expected to report their findings on global demography. Why is it important
to study global demography?

The study of demography is important as it allows us to study the nature in which

our population changes over time, and this is important as it allows us to study
how changes to the population such as aging population phenomenon can lead
to a decrease in GDP and also increase in mechanization of jobs and production
in developed countries.

In Malthusian theory of population claims that in poor countries,” population

grows faster than food supply”.

There are many reasons why this occurrence happens to poor countries. Rapid
growth of population could be due to:

a. lack or absence of adequate knowledge of the people regarding natural and

safe method or measures on family planning.

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UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

b. insufficient fund to finance the cost of information-dissemination.

c. inability of parents to send their children to school for functional education and
training.

On the other hand, it should be understood that, large number of population is

not at all bad or disadvantageous. There are countries that experiences shortage
in human resources to work that’s why they encourage other nationalities to
come and work and stay with them.

Recent study will tell us that there are three babies born every minute,
demographers predicts that by the middle of this century, there will be countries
that will double if not triple their population if it is left unchecked. Demographers
also predict that the world population can still be stabilize.

“The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) warns that in order for countries to
mitigate the impact of population growth, food production must increase to
70%.” They therefore enjoin governments to keep their markets open and move
eventually towards a global trading system that is fair and competitive and that
contributes to a dependable market for food.
Different versions of family life determine the economic and social policies that
each country formulates regarding their population. Development planners can
picture urbanization or industrialization as an indicator of a developing society
but they disagree on the role of population growth. There should be a promotion
of global population control to reduce the growth rate.

By reducing the population, important resources can be utilized for economic

progress and not to be wasted to feeding more mouths. That’s why government
should create policies to combat population explosion

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:
 identify the cause and effect of Global Migration;
 involve yourself in gathering data and
 narrate experience in interviewing a former or a current OFW about
transnationalism and the factors that affects global migration.
 share insights about the award winning documentary film The
Corporation.

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UNIT 4: Global Population and Mobility

PRESENTATION OF CONTENT
What is Migration?

Migration is the movement of people from one place to another. It may be within
a particular place or outside a particular place. There are groups of people who
move to a particular place due to the following reasons;

1. Those who move to another country permanently.

2. Those who move to work as contract workers.
3. Those who move illegally.
4. Those who move because they were petitioned.
5. Those who move to seek asylum.
6. Those who were unable to move because they have fear of persecution.
Records will show that there were people who are currently living outside their
birth place due to economic reasons, they seek for a greener pasture.

The influx of migrants has been the problem of receiving countries because they
are not sure if they will be an asset or a liability to the government. Government
should have an existing policy on how they can control the flooding of migrants.
There are cases wherein countries are faced with issues on the entrance of illegal
migrants wherein there were attempts to build walls just so they can control the
entrance and exits of people.

For this, government does not have a choice but to generate jobs for those skilled
workers because their presence will give an increase in their gross domestic
product. And because of these, different countries will do the same by sharing
resources with each other the only fear is that if there will be an influx of illegal
migrants who does illegal things in receiving countries.

REFERENCES

“International Migration At The Beginning of the Twenty-First Century: Global

Trends And Issues” by Stephen Castles

“ Differentiating Sedimented from Modular Transnationalism: The View from East

Asia”. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal by Filomeno Aguilar

Saskia Sassen: ‘The Global City: A New Frontier

The Contemporary World by Lisandro e. Claudio and Patricio N. Abinales

The Contemporary World by Prince Kennex Reguyal Aldama