LEARNING MODULE SURIGAO STATE COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Learning Module

in

GE – Contemporary World
Prepared by:

Kristopher M. Ngilangil, MA
Assistant Professor II
Subject Teacher

Adapted by:

Vanissa E. Velarde, MAEd

Florencia T. Sulima MAEd
Dean Mark A. Ogaob, MAEd
Marjorie F. Espina, M.A
Subject Teacher

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General Instructions:

Your answer in pre-assessment, post-test, and learning activities shall be rated using
the following rubric and criteria.

For the essay type of questions

Rubric
1pt Answer is incorrect but there is some correct support.
2 pts. Answer is correct but no support is provided.
3 pts. Answer is correct and there is some support.
4 pts. Answer is correct and the support is developed.
5 pts. Answer is correct and the support is fully developed.

For Concept map/Venn diagram/map/poster/collage

Criteria Rating
Appropriateness of Concept applied 15 pts.
Clarity of idea/message portrayed 15 pts.
Creativity 15 pts.
Originality 5 pts.
Total 50 pts.

For paper analysis/term paper/reflection paper

Criteria Rating
Clarity of content/message cited 20 pts.
Appropriateness of ideas cited 20 pts.
Mechanics 10 pts.
Total 50 pts.

For the prayer

Criteria Rating
Appropriateness of the words that conforms the theme 20 pts.
Originality 15 pts.
Mechanics 15 pts.
Total 50 pts.

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I - Module 5 – GLOBAL POPULATION AND MOBILITY

II - Topics

5.1 The Global City

5.2 Global Demography
5.3 Global Migration and Labor Export

III - TIME FRAME: 6 hrs.

IV - INTRODUCTION:

Reporting for Citiscope, a global NGO that advocates for sustainable cities through
journalism and creative storytelling, Gabriela Rico summarizes the United Nations Human
Settlements Program‟s (UN-Habitat) World Cities Report by identifying “uneven urbanization,
growing decentralization, expanding informal settlements, record high inequality, forced
migration, and rising urban insecurity” as key trends that characterize global urbanization for
the past twenty years. These pressing concerns are relevant to the Philippine context,
considering that 44 percent of the country‟s population live in cities. This population boom
has put Metro Manila‟s housing and transportation services under much stress.

V - INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES: In this lesson, the students will be able to:

1. identify and explain the attributes of a global city and the theory of the demographic
transition that affects global population;
2. write a reflection paper analyzing the political, economic, cultural, and social factors
underlying the global movements of people;
3. display firsthand knowledge of the experiences of OFWs.

VI - PRE – ASSESSMENT:

Describe life in the global What is global demography? Why people migrate?
city…..

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VII - LEARNING ACTIVITIES

The Global City

Val
Colik-Peisker
identifies being
cosmopolitan, and post-industrial
as leading attributes of a global
city. By cosmopolitan, she mean
“cultural diversity is detected on
the surface as a „cosmopolitan
feel‟: the global city‟s „natives‟
encountering and engaging daily
with a variety of immigrants and
visitors. The result is cosmopolitan‟
consumption, „cosmopolitan‟ work
culture, global networking and
„glocal‟ transnational community relations.” She further elaborates on the concept of
cosmopolitanism as “a phenomenon most readily associated with the global city: large,
diverse cities attracting people, material and cultural products from all over the world. The
idea of cosmopolitanism usually invokes pleasant images of travel, exploration and „worldly‟
pursuits enjoyed by those who have benefited from globalization and who can, in some
ways, consider themselves „citizens of the world‟”; a consumerist world of malls and
supermarkets, of theme parks and leisure centers offering “a cross-cultural variety of food,
fashion, entertainment and various other consumables and artefacts.” Such cosmopolitanism
is present in much of Metro Manila – full of highly educated, English-speaking, young, skilled
workers and professionals; malls selling all sorts of local and imported goods from cosmetics
and chocolates to T-shirts and foreign delicacies; and Western and Asian expatriates
enjoying First World luxuries in a Third World country.

With regard to the global city‟s another

attribute of being post-industrial Colic-Peisker
points out that “one of the conditions of the status
of global city is to stop making things and switch to
handling and shifting money and ideas.” She adds
that “Singapore is another recent addition to the
global city club, with its efficient global transport
infrastructure and growing professional service
sector.” Singapore‟s continuous economic growth
and its government‟s competence in ensuring
effective urban planning enabled it to jump to the
sixth place in A.T Kearney‟s Global Cities Index
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.” Shanghai is another Asian city with a post-industrial status achieved through
“the conversion of land uses, especially from industrial to commercial uses,” facilitated by a
steady growth of foreign investment infusion that enabled the city to reshape its skylines with
“mushrooming skyscrapers, advertisements for commercial goods, especially for the
products of multinationals – Coca-Cola, Pepsi, 7Up, Visa, McDonald‟s, Kentucky Fried
Chicken.” In 2010, Shanghai was included in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a “city
of design,” determined to “put design at the core of its sustainable economic growth and
development plan,” as evident in the economic contribution of creative industries to
Shanghai – 255.5 billion yuan in 2013, increasing by 11.8 percent from 2012. Creative

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industries encompass businesses such as “design, music, publishing, architecture, film and
video crafts, visual arts, fashion, TV and radio, advertising, literature, computer games and
performing arts,” marks of the post-industrial setup suited to the identify of global cities.

Global cities are also typically colonial-linked. Gregory Bracken narrates how Asian
cities transitioned from being colonial to being global, observing that the current global cities
with modern telecommunications “have not created networks out of nothing. The nodal
points in the global city network have formed themselves in places where networks already
existed, cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Shanghai. Shanghai is an interesting
case in point, whereas Hong Kong and Singapore made the almost flawless segue from
colonial enterpot to global city, Shanghai was cut off from the rest of the world after 1949.

Bracken further explains how “the politics of post-colonial survival became successful
developmental policies, paving the way for some of the Tiger Economies that so startled the
world at the end of the twentieth century, a sign that there is an important link between
colonial networks and global cities.” Some leaders of postcolonial societies strived to
industrialize their countries, provide social services to their citizens, and achieve higher living
standards for their people, as this is the only way to legitimize their leadership after
independence from their colonial masters. Vijay Prashad offers an account of such
“postcolonial survival” that enabled Third World colonies to leap from agrarian or semi-
industrial status to industrial and now, even post-industrial era.

Meanwhile, Saskia Sassen outlines seven hypotheses that explain how economic
globalization facilitated the birth and growth of global cities.

1. dispersal of globalization-related economic activities such as managing,

coordinating, servicing, financing a firm‟s network of operations across the
world
2. increasing complexity of the central functions compel the headquarters of
large global firms to outsource: accounting, legal, public relations,
programming, telecommunications, and other services
3. specialized service firms engaged in the most complex and globalized
markets are subject to agglomeration economies and that major attribute of a
global city is being information technology-capable
4. outsourcing makes corporations “freer, to opt for any location, because less
work actually done in the headquarters is subject to agglomeration economies

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5. specialized service firms need to provide a global service which has meant a
global network of affiliates or some other form of partnership, and as a result
a strengthen cross-border city-to-city transactions and networks
6. growing numbers of high-level professionals and high profit making
specialized service firms have the effect of raising the degree of spatial and
socio-economic inequality evident in the cities
7. [ i ]nformalizing part of or all production and distribution activities, including
services, is one way of surviving under conditions

Related to the aforementioned sixth and seventh hypotheses, Colic-Peisker remarks

that “global cities that attract large population intakes have high real-estate prices and as a
consequence of population growth suffer falling housing affordability. She further
enumerates downsides of everyday life in a global city: “high housing costs, long working
hours, competitive and precarious labor market, long commuting times, urban anonymity and
a relative social isolation, a fear of strangers and crime after (or even before) dark,
residential hyper-mobility and, as the flipside of anonymity, the challenges of practicing
neighborliness and multiculturalism in close propinquity to „diverse‟ neighbors.

Chris Hudson identifies global

cities as “command points in the global
economy,” as the core of globalization
as spaces for industries that produce
commodities and firms that provide
services such as accounting, banking,
information processing and the like.
From factories, warehouses, and more
recently, even food farms, to banks,
stock markets, information technology
hubs, and BPO units, cities offer
convenience through proximity and just-
in-time production and delivery of
products and services.

Joseph Stiglitz called as “globalization‟s discontents” clearly include the formerly

important manufacturing centers and point cities that have lost functions and are in decline,
not only in the less developed countries but also in the most advanced economies. These
are mostly deindustrialized regions in the US, UK, and other developed nations which failed
to catch up with so-called “knowledge economy” boom or to compete effectively with newly
industrialized countries such as Brazil and China. The gap between the winners and losers
of globalization in and beyond the global cities, between the haves and the haves-nots, will
seem to only worsen in the next few decades as the global population steadily increases
while patterns of wealth distribution under an unsustainable economic system remain the
same.

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Task 13: Identify at least 5 attributes of a global city and discuss the salient
point in each attribute. Follow the matrix below.

Attributes Salient point

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Global Demography

The theory of
demographic transition
hypothesizes that societies
typically transition from periods of high and
death rates to eras of lower birth and death
rates, as they engage in the process of
industrialization from agrarian or pre-industrial
beginnings. Ronal Lee summarizes what
happened in the said transition: “before the start
of demographic 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.

Industrialization partly led to the expansion of scientific inquiries which helped

improve health care for many citizens. Medical historian Simon Szreter cautions against
directly correlating industrialization and improvements in the people‟s general health, as
“developed nations endured the „four Ds‟ of disruption, deprivation, disease and death during
their ideological divisions and conflict-and their subsequent resolution in favor of the health
interests of the working-class majorities – were key factors in determining whether
industrialization exerted a positive or negative net effect on population health.”

The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) identifies four
stages of the classical demographic transition model, namely pre-transition – “characterized
by high birth rates, and high fluctuating death rates; population growth was kept low by
Malthusian „preventative‟ (late age at marriage) and „positive‟ (famine, war, pestilence)
checks”; early transition when “the death rate begins to fall as birth rates remain high, the
population starts to grow rapidly”; late transition, the period when “birth rates start to decline

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and the rate of population growth decelerates”‟ and post-transition, “characterized by low
birth and low death rates, and population growth is negligible, or even enters a decline.”

Drew Grover
present an alternative
phasing, with five
stages of the
demographic transition.
In this model, Stage 1,
is the phase
characterized by birth
rates and death rates
that are high. During
this stage, population
size “remains fairly
constant,” but can
experience “major
swings” with disruptive
events such as wars or
pandemics. Stage 2
refers to the period of
modern medicine that
helps lower death rates, “especially among children, while birth rates remain high,” resulting
to rapid population growth. Stage 3 begins when “births rates gradually decrease, usually as
a result of improved economic conditions, an increase in women‟s status, and access to
contraception.” This is the period of continuous population growth, albeit at a lower rate.
Stage 4 is the period of population stability when birth rate, as well as the death rate, is low.
Countries in this stage “tend to have stronger economies, higher levels of education, better
healthcare, a higher proportion of working women, and a fertility rate hovering around two
children per woman.” Meanwhile, Stage 5 refers to a period of an aging population where
fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level of two children. Simply put, the elderly
population outnumber the young population in this stage.

All throughout the demographic transition, countries tend to experience population

rises, but they differ in the pace of entering the various stages. For example, less
economically developed countries (LEDCs) are still at stage 2 or 3 where the population
continues to increase at a high rate. On the other hand, more economically developed
countries (MEDCs) are now at stage 4, that is, when the high population is complemented by
a low birth rate and a low death rate. The transition has potential dividends as demographic
transition results in higher per capita income due to higher productivity as large percentage
of population joins the labor force; shifting of government expenditures from education and
health services into investment that promotes growth; individuals accumulate saving in their
working years to serve as buffer during their retirement years; when society increases its
saving rate, this results in rapid economic growth, creating the second demographic
dividend; overall contribution of demographic dividend is about 35% of the average annual
economic growth of the Asian economies (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan,
Thailand) during the period 1965-1995.

To reap the said dividends, the

Philippines will have to resolve the challenges
posed by the country‟s “slow reduction in
fertility rate, particularly among the poorest
households” and its “high unemployment and
underemployment rates among the young
workers, particularly the 20 to 24 years old

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group.” It concludes that 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 trends of the demographic transition are not set in stone and can
be disrupted by some factors:

Aside from man-made disasters, two major factors could, however, jeopardize the enormous
advances of survival achieved during the last century, or cripple future progress. The first is any
unforeseen modification of the system of pathologies, through the emergence of new deadly
diseases, as well as the resilience of old diseases caused by, for instance, unforeseen resistance to
antibiotics. The emergence and rise of HIV infections, and the costly struggle to contain its
consequences, should be kept in mind as a symptom of the mutability of the biological sphere. The
same can be said of the Ebola virus. The other factor is the possible economic unsustainability of
modern health care systems, threatened by rising costs and demographic aging. Inasmuch as rising
costs produce a retrenchment of public health care and restricted accessibility to health services,
more inequality and more vulnerability may be generated, with negative consequences for survival.

In the long run, Livi-Bacci‟s warning emphasizes that the trend toward global
population stability can still be reserved by existing diseases and even potential future ones.
Moreover, his analysis reveals that the demographic transition‟s trend toward an 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. As countries still vary in their population growth rates, managed migration may
help resolve this dilemma: younger migrants from populous Third World countries can help
alleviate the problem of labor shortage in aging First World societies, while at the same time
helping lift their families in the Third World out of poverty.

Task 14: Analyze the political, economic, cultural, and social factors that underlying
the global movements of people. Write in the template below.

Political

Economic

Cultural

Social Factors

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Global Migration and Labor Export

Political factors underlying the global

movements of people include the pressure to
resolve unemployment and prevent simmering
social discontent from going out hand (e.g.,
popularization of revolution as a means to
shake off the foundations of or to transform
society, in the absence of socio-economic
reforms). Economic factors that drive people to
migrate include poverty and lack of ample job
opportunities and social mobility in the Third
World, and First World corporate penchant for cheap docile labor.

In the case of the Philippines, migration started its upward trend during the 1970s,
after the 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 public employment offices and rationalize the participation of the private
sector in the recruitment and placement workers, locally and overseas. To serve national
development objectives” and ensuring the “careful selection of Filipino workers for overseas
employment.” Book 1, Article 17 establishes an Overseas Employment Development Board
which is supposed “to undertake, in cooperation with relevant entities and agencies, a
systematic program for overseas employment of Filipino workers in excess of domestic
needs and to protect their rights to fair and equitable employment practices.”

The statistics on increasing Overseas Filipino Workers‟ (OFW) remittances in the

past years–with the amount of remittances increasing to almost 20 times the remittances in
1989, within just two decades–give sufficient proof that the LEP is still considered as an
employment-generating scheme even under the administrations that succeeded the Marcos
regime. Such nearly constant rise in the remittances during the past twenty years has been
made possible by post-Marcos regimes‟ continuation and expansion of the LEP which was
initially considered as a mere temporary remedy to unemployment during the restive years
under the Marcos regime. Successive administrations from the first Aquino government to
the Duterte regime implemented schemes that made the LEP a main (if not permanent)
fixture of the employment program of the Philippines, instead of building the industrial base
of the country and modernizing its agricultural sector to provide sustainable domestic jobs to
Filipino citizens. With the country‟s poverty rate remaining high and its unemployment rate
being worst in Southeast Asia, many Filipinos still consider migration as an option to improve
their quality of life. India, the top migrant remittances receiver, is also a poor, working
population of 55.5 percent, compared with the Philippines having 36.8 percent.

The increasing amount of OFW remittances coincides with constantly negative

balance of payments–a mark of a weak manufacturing sector. Some academics express the
observation that the Philippine government has become content with remittances and
seemingly fail to substantially strengthen domestic industries; more especially because
remittances kept on coming even after the 2008 international financial crisis broke out. A
professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia stated “the most serious negative
effect of labor export policies has been the neglect of domestic production and poor
investments in infrastructure, agriculture, mining, export promotion, and social development
because of the easy availability of funds from remittances. The country may be likened to a

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man who has become lazy because he receives remittances from a wife working as a
domestic worker abroad. For the government, the easy money from foreign remittance is a
major cause of its inability to pursue sound economic development programs.

Aside from the fact that the country‟s reliance on remittances stunts in appetite for
improving its industrial base, it is also necessary to emphasize that generally, the host
countries of OFWs benefit more them, as the OFW phenomenon has sent hundreds of
thousands of workers each year abroad, which can be equated to lost skilled laborers and
professionals for the Philippines. The very labor that the Philippines exports to industrial
countries is the very brain and brawn it needs to lift itself out of poverty through
industrialization and agricultural modernization.

This lopsided setup that favors the industrialized countries that hire OFWs can be
exposed further by looking at recent evidence of labor exploitation such as lower salaries
vis-à-vis the salaries of workers who are citizens of the host countries, and other related
schemes of exploitation. A number of examples from top sources of OFW remittances can
be mentioned at this point. In Hong Kong, foreign domestic helpers in receive a wage of at
least HKD 4,410 per month.

Meanwhile, part of the published report of Human Rights Watch focuses on migrant
workers in Saudi, and the abuse and exploitation they experience. In the report particular
testimonies from Filipino migrant workers were highlighted. With regard to compensation,
particular mention must be made about the dismally low salary of house help personnel in
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It was only in 2012 when the minimum salary
has been raised to USD 400 from a mere USD 250. Such salary is relatively low, considering
that the said countries are high-income nations. More recently, 77 migrant workers in
Canada, majority of which are Filipinos, won a settlement agreement against a transnational
corporation that failed to pay their airfare, overtime, and recruitment agency fees. The
Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) under which the complainants were hired is
notoriously known as a labor scheme reportedly used to “exploit migrant workers who lack
sufficient employment protections, benefits, and compensation.” Simply put, it is a scheme
through which exploitative firms seek contractual laborers from Third World countries like the
Philippines and China in lieu of Canadian citizens who are usually paid more and receive the

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usual benefits of permanent employment. The problem has become a race-to-the-bottom

dilemma and is poised to worsen in the coming years.

In conclusion, global migration entails the globalization of people. And like the
broader globalization process, it is uneven. Some migrants experience their movement as a
liberating process. A highly educated professional may find moving to another country
financially rewarding. At the other end, a victim of sex trafficking may view the process of
migration as dislocating and disempowering.

Like globalization, moreover, migration produces different and often contradictory

responses. On the other hand, many richer states know that migrant labor will be beneficial
for their economies. With their aging populations, Japan and Germany will need workers
from demographically young countries like the Philippines. Similarly, as working populations
in countries like the United States move to more skilled careers, their economies will require
migrants to work jobs that their local workers are beginning to reject. And yet, despite these
benefits, developed countries continue to excessively limit and restrict migrant labor. They
do for numerous factors already mentioned. Some want to preserve what they perceive as
local culture by shielding it from newcomers. Other state use migrants as scapegoats,
blaming them for economic woes that are, in reality, caused by government policy and not by
foreigners.

Task 15: Interview one (1) Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW), (use any means of
communication; e.g. messenger video call, messenger chat, cellphone call, etc.). Follow the
information details below:

Name of the OFW

Age
Civil Status
Number of Children
Permanent Philippines Address
Country Working
No. of years as OFW
Monthly salary
Reason/s why opted to work as (discuss in paragraph form)
an OFW

Challenges encountered as an (discuss in paragraph form)

OFW

Note: include a proof or documentation of your interview (screenshot etc.)

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VIII - SELF- EVALUATION:

Why Philippines and

Thailand were considered
“tiger cub economies” in the
1990s?

What is an industrialized
country?

Differentiate unemployment
and underemployment?

IX - REVIEW OF CONCEPTS:

 Migrant is citizen who leaves his/her country of birth to work or reside in

another country.
 A refugee is been forced to flee his/her country to escape war, political
persecution, catastrophe, and natural disaster.
 Remittances is money sent by migrants to their home countries
 Diaspora is the movement of a community of migrants bound by a common
cultural heritage and/or home country.
 Knowledge economy in which growth is propelled by the production,
dissemination, and processing of information toward creative innovations,
rather than typical industrial mass production of commodities.
 Workers in the informal sector are permanent fixtures in global cities. They
are among globalization‟s nonwinners–earning just enough to survive day
after day.

X - POST TEST: Answer the following questions.

1. How does the population boom affect the country‟s transportation systems and
housing markets?
___________________________________________________________________

2. What attributes of a global city does Metro Manila reflect?

___________________________________________________________________

3. What are the positive and negative impacts of the labor export policy to the
Philippines?
___________________________________________________________________

XI - REFERENCES

1. Al, PK. (2018). The Contemporary World. 1st Ed.

2. San Juan, DM. (2018). Journey through Our Contemporary World. Vibal Publication,
Manila, Philippines

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3. https://www.editage.com/insights/how-to-choose-the-research-methodology-best-
suited-for-your-study
4. https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+a+global+city
5. https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+Five+Stages+of+the+Demographic+Tr
ansition+Model
6. https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+global+demography
7. https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+philippine+fertility+rate
8. https://www.google.com/search?q=image+of+labor+OFW

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