SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

General Education Department

THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

LESSON 8 GLOBAL POPULATION AND MOBILITY

This lesson investigates how the populations of the

world changed through time in terms of its population
size, composition and distribution across space. It
provides an introductory level of demography, which is
the study of populations. Demography is a central
component for analyzing the societal contexts and social
change.

Population size, as an aspect of demography can change through births, deaths and migration across
time and space. Whereas, the population’s composition may be described in terms of basic demographic
features – age, sex, family and household status – and by features of the population’s social and
economic context – language, education, occupation, ethnicity, religion, income and wealth. The
distribution of populations can be defined at multiple levels (local, regional, national, global) and with
different types of boundaries (political, economic, and geographic).

Demography is very useful for understanding social and economic problems and identifying potential
solutions. Demographers are engaged in social planning, market research, insurance forecasting, labor
market analysis, economic development and so on. They work for private firms and public agencies at
local, regional, national and international levels.

READING ACTIVITY NO. 1

Read the following articles on the Urban Challenges, list at least 5 challenges and explain each.
1. Meeting the Urban Challenges
https://mirror.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/5883_42389_Meeting%20the%20Urban
%20Challenges.pdf
2. UNICEF Urban Challenges
https://www.unicef.org/sowc2012/pdfs/SOWC-2012-Chapter-3-Urban-challenges.pdf
3. Urbanization Challenges https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/Clos,%20Joan.pdf
THE GLOBAL CITIES

Many social scientists argue that we are moving away from the age of nations, to the age of cities. Some
theorists maintain that cities will become islands of governance replacing nations as the most critical
political unit. Take for example Moscow, Washington, Beijing, and even Pyongyang.

Cities have been the engines of productivity and growth throughout history and will be essential to the
future growth and competitiveness of nations and regions. This is especially true at a time of massive
and rapid urbanization in emerging markets; hence, the focus on the competitiveness of cities.

Understanding how cities function in the global system, how they are transformed by their roles in
global networks, and how their institutional and social fabrics transform the global networks is central
to the understanding of the impact of globalization on people’s everyday lives.

The First Cities

The primitive way of life generally involved hunting and gathering. It forced people to move all the time.
However, once our ancestors discovered how to domesticate animals and cultivate crops, they were
able to stay in one place. Raising their own food also created a material surplus, which freed some
people from food production and allowed them to build shelters, make tools, weave cloth, and take part
in religious rituals. The emergence of cities led to both higher living standards and job specialization.

The first city that we know of was Jericho, which lies to the north of the Dead Sea in what is now the
West Bank. But as the centuries passed, cities grew to tens of thousands of people and became the
centers of vast empires.

Ancient Cities
Cities form and inform networks across regions and civilizations. The Silk Road, for instance, connected
cities along its main arterial routes, forming global markets and connected cities. Great cultures were
created along these roads, and variation of older cultures emerged.

Industrial Cities
The center of production and commerce shifted to Europe. This was known as the best and worst of
times. This was also when life in the city gave birth to the modern individual (human rights, civil right,
workers rights, beliefs, etc.). Internal migration and immigration changed the faces, colors, sights,
sounds, and smells of urban life. The cities freed individuals; it released people from the unjust
inequality imposed by tradition and arbitrary authorities and prejudices of the small town.

Contemporary Cities
As the 20th century began, cites became centers of manufacturing and commerce. They were filthy from
burning fossil fuels, lack of sewage and sanitation and homelessness. But as manufacturing moved, cities
became visibly cleaner--- in imagined and stylized form. They spilled over their political boundaries and
become “metropolitan regions” with much of the industry and manufacturing moving into outlying
areas. The “strategic centers”, rather than manufacturing, centers were then developed. This comprised
the corporate headquarters.

Global Cities (termed as world city in the1960’s-1980’s)

This particular type of city emerged with globalization. It is considered as a hub of power: political and
economic, national, and international. It also integrated with other hubs of power. Global cities are
home to “iconic architecture” with stunning design, one-of-a-kind and famous even if it bears little
resemblance to the cities they “represent”. Iconic architecture gives skylines of global cities a “fantasy-
like” quality. Cities are centers of the control of production, consumption, finance, and commerce from
around the world. They are usually distinguished by the extent of its influence round the world and not
the size of their population.

Life in Global Cities

Global cities are command centers for production, commercial and financial enterprises. It fosters
connectivity wherein executives remotely manage/ control other facilities. Services are advanced such
as financial planners, stockbrokers, tax attorneys, consultants, and the like.

Two Types of Workers

Cities are juxtaposition of the most powerful classes and the least powerful: the wealthy and elite
groups (executives, advisers, consultants) and the low-paid service workers. Both are migrant classes.
The elite control the political sphere, have business interests, tax purposes, etc. while the poor have
global interests and aimed to send money home. The elite class demand culturally rich life of
restaurants, films, theater and activities and labor intensive services (laundry, dining, and
infrastructures).

Attributes of a Global City

Established in 2008, A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities was one of the first to rank cities based on their global
standing, and it remains highly regarded for its holistic assessment of city capabilities and potential.
Designed by top academics and business advisors, the analysis is based on facts and publicly available
data. The report is developed annually, updating the underlying information and reviewing whether new
cities meet the criteria for inclusion. Since its inception, the report has added the Global Cities Outlook
and increased the number of cities it assesses nearly every year.

The Global Cities Index’s metrics includes Business Activity (30%); Human Capital (30%); Information
Exchange (15%); Cultural Experience (15%); and Political Engagement (10%). Meanwhile, the Global
Cities Outlook indicators include Personal well-being (25%); Economics (25%); Innovation (25%); and
Governance (25%).

The 2018 edition’s theme focused on “Learning from the East: Insights from China's Urban Success.” It
chronicled the remarkable rise of China’s super cities and how a comprehensive approach to
urbanization is paying off in spades for the global powerhouse. China’s key cities have experienced
greater progress than cities in the other regions of the world during the 10 years of A.T. Kearney’s Global
Cities research; business activity remains the dominant factor, although human capital and cultural
experience are also significant drivers of growth.

THE GLOBAL MOBILITY

Migration pertains to the mobility or the movement of the population across space. It may be internal,
where it refers to people moving from one area to another within one country, or it could also be
international, migration, in which where people cross the border of one country to go to another.

From the recent international migration trends, the top countries of origin are: India, Mexico, China,
Philippines, Afghanistan and the top destinations are the West and Middle East and the United States.

There are different kinds of migrants; they can be vagabonds or tourists. A vagabond refers to people
who move involuntarily. They can be (1) refugees, they are those who are forced to leave their
homeland due to their fear for their safety; (2) asylum seekers, those who seek to remain in the country
to which they flee; or (3) a labor migrants, those who are forced to search for work outside his/her
home country by “push” and “pull” factors. Tourists on the other hand are people who move anywhere
in the world because they want to.

A major challenge in analyzing the mobility of the population is the difficulty in acquiring data. Many
countries do not collect data and those that collect data do not report them to international agencies.
Population flows are defined differently in different countries and only few countries keep track of their
expatriates. Thus, it makes more difficult to track on illegal migrants.

Many nations tend to keep the labor it needs but there is also an influx of large number of migrants into
another country which can at times lead to conflict. Migration impediments also could be attributed to
the growing concern over terrorism. Such difficulties could be ascribed as a product of the Westphalia
era.

Migration is as old as humankind. People have always moved in search of better living conditions for
themselves and for their loved ones or escaping from dramatic situations in their homeland. These two
major drivers were the fundamentals of the ‘push and pull’ theory that was first proposed by Lee in
1966, encompassing economic, environmental, social and political factors pushing out from the
individual homeland and attracting him/her towards the destination country. According to Castelli
(2018), that in the current global world reality is certainly much more complex and faceted, involving
both local national realities and macro-level causes as well as meso-level and micro-level causes related
to the link of the individual to his/her ethnic or religious group and the personal characteristic of the
individuals respectively drives people to move.
Drivers of migration
Inadequate human and economic development
Human development is enormously unbalanced in the various regions of the planet and the gap is
increasingly wide. Poor health services little educated and qualified work force and poverty are a fertile
background promoting migration of individuals in search of a better life. New communication
technologies, largely available in urban settings even in developing countries, allows people to compare
the western lifestyle with the local situations where the luxurious houses and cars of expatriates (and
local authorities…) often contrast with the poor living conditions of the local populations.

The Poverty rate is higher in Mindanao than in Luzon and the Visayas. According to the Family Income
and Expenditure Survey (FIES) 2015, 36 percent of the population of Mindanao lived below the poverty
line, compared to 13.1 percent in Luzon and 28 percent in the Visayas. Poverty is particularly high in
rural Mindanao. In 2012, there were 1.2 million food-poor farmers and fisher folk (27 percent of the
total) and 1.1 million (25 percent) living between the food and poverty thresholds. Another 1.4 million
(31 percent) lived close to the absolute poverty line (20 percent above), making them highly vulnerable
to fall back into poverty. Thus a total of 3.7 million farmers and fisher folk lived in or near poverty,18
leaving only 0.7 million (16 percent) with regular marketable surplus to generate savings for the next
planting season (Figures 3 and 4). In part, the high poverty rate reflects unequal economic and political
power. When one person or firm controls the land, labor, credit, and product markets or any
combination thereof, he can drive farmers to subsistence by exploiting interlocking markets or even
blocking access to markets. Consultations and research undertaken for this study suggest that these
practices thrive in Mindanao and have the effect of locking some farmers and fisher folk into a vicious
spiral of poverty and indebtedness.

Demographic increase, urbanization

The population of western industrialized countries is reducing in size and getting progressively old (aging
population), while the young working-age population of the developing countries is rapidly increasing.

Climate changes
According to the International Organization for Migration, “environmental migrants” are those ‘persons
or groups of persons who, for reason of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that
adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do
so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad’.

It has been suggested that the environment may impact on migration flows by directly affecting the
hazardousness of a place. But It also indirectly changes the economic, political, social and demographic
context with very complex interrelationships.

Wars and dictatorship

Even now, at the beginning of the third millennium, many areas of the world—in virtually all continents
—host bloody conflicts and social instability where armed parties fight or where rude dictatorships are
ruling and denying social rights. Some are well-known to the public (i.e. Syria and Afghanistan), while
others are not as is the case of the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Somalia) and some areas of West Africa (Mali,
Gambia) and the Sahelian region or in Central and Southern America.

In the Philippines, violent conflict has had a major impact on the growth and poverty levels of one of its
major islands, throughout Mindanao. Concerns over security have depressed tourism and boosted the
emigration of skilled workers. The reputational damage caused by insecurity even reduces investment in
areas relatively unaffected by violence. These areas also bear the fiscal burden of coping with displaced
persons. On the other hand, more peaceful areas have benefited from opportunities to process
agricultural produce from conflict affected areas, where processing facilities are rare. Many of the
latter’s skilled workers from conflict-affected areas have also migrated to other regions of Mindanao.

Land grabbing
Land grabbing is a phenomenon that has become increasingly important since the beginning of the new
millennium. The term ‘land grabbing’ refers to the intensive exploitation of vast areas of land in rural
areas of low-income countries by private international enterprises or even by foreign governments in
order to implement large-scale intensive cultivations (mainly biofuels and food crops) or to exploit
minerals, forestry or the touristic industry.

Religion
Religion has been the pretext for ethnic persecution and expulsion, as is possibly the case for the
Rohingya Muslim population from Myanmar or the mass movements caused by armed fundamentalists
groups such as Daesh or Boko Haram in the Middle East and sub-Saharan West Africa, respectively

Sexual identity
Several countries have a quite a restrictive policy on sexual identity and LTGB people (lesbians, gay,
transgender and bisexual people) face psychological and even physical violence, forcing them to hide
their sexual identity. A comprehensive overview of the issues related to the protection of social rights in
those people forced to migrate due to their sexual orientation may be found in the 2013 thematic issue
of Forced Migration Review.

Education
The relationship between education and migration are twofold. From one side, the migration of
educated people from low-middle income countries to OECD countries constitutes a net loss of human
qualified resources for the origin countries and a gain for the host country. This phenomenon is known
as ‘brain drain’. From the other side, the financial and ideational remittances from destination countries
may also have an impact on the education of non-migration children and adolescents in their origin
countries
GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY

In the last 60 years, the age structure of the population has been rapidly changing in most countries all
over the world and this phenomenon, given the right policies in the labor market, health, governance
and economy, has created a rare window of opportunity for countries to experience rapid economic
growth over a relatively long period. The idea behind this link between population dynamics (or
changing age structure) and economic development is the demographic transition.

The demographic transition theory may be illustrated using the population composition of the
Philippines from the latest census of population and compare with countries of similar geo-political
structure.

An Illustration of the Demographic Transition

In Mapa’s (2015) study, demographic transition is described as a change from a situation of high fertility
and high mortality to one of low fertility and low mortality (refer to Figure 3.1). A country that enters
into a demographic transition experiences sizable changes in the age distribution of the population. The
changes in the age structure are foreseeable consequence of the demographic transition. These
changes, coupled with the right policies, affect economic growth.

Figure 3.1. Declining Mortality, Declining Fertility and the Demographic Transition

The demographic transition has three phases, with each phase having a different impact on the
economy. The first phase of the demographic transition is triggered by an initial decline in infant
mortality (death rate) but fertility (birth rate) remains high, resulting in the swelling of the youth
dependency group (like the Philippines, figure 1.2). This phase creates a challenge to the economy as
scarce resources are channeled to consumption rather than investment, as demand for basic education,
primary health care, and other population-related services increases, thereby hindering economic
growth.
 Figure 3.2. Phase One of Demographic Transition

The second phase of the demographic transition (like Thailand in figure 1.3) is when the proportion of
working-age population (defined as those aged 15 to 64) is larger relative to the young dependents (0 to
14 years) and the older population (65 years and above). This is the phase when the number of
productive working age population is the highest. The policy challenge at this stage of the demographic
transition is how to absorb the growing working agegroup, particularly those coming from the 15 to 24
age group (the first group to enter the labor market). If employment opportunities expand, the second
phase of the demographic transition will accelerate economic growth.

Figure 3.3. Phase Two of Demographic Transition

The third and last phase of the transition (like Japan in figure 1.4) is when the older cohort (those aged
65 years and above) swells relative to the total population. The growing aging population during the
third phase of the demographic transition can slow down the country’s economic growth as the number
of consumers (the older population) grows faster compared to productive workers.
 Figure 3.4. Phase Three of Demographic Transition

Health outcomes in the ARMM are also worrying. Maternal mortality is 67.4 per 100,000 live births,
compared to the national average of 64.8. Only 3 in 10 one-year-olds are immunized, compared to the
national average of 7 (Figure 38). Malnutrition is prevalent, and micronutrient supplementation is rare.
Less than half of ARMM households have access to health care, and have to deal with poorly staffed
health centers. In general, 95 percent of pregnant Filipino women have access to antenatal care, but
only 53 percent of ARMM women do so(Figure 39). In 2012, only 37 percent of ARMM households had
access to safe water and 23 percent access to a sanitary toilet; the national averages were 80 and 87
percent. As a result, diarrheal diseases are prevalent. Due to malnutrition, poor household environment
and access to preventive health services, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and other respiratory
infections also remain a problem. Three main fertility-reducing variables have merited the attention of
researchers in demography and economics: education of women, female labor force participation, and
health of children.

LEARNING ACTIVITY NO. 1

A. CONVERSATIONS WITH A BAGONG BAYANI (OFW) – video documentary project
Conduct a short documentary video featuring an Overseas Filipino Worker. It is important to secure a
written or oral consent from the worker before conducting the activity, it could be a neighbor or a family
member.

The following questions may be asked:

1. What pushed you to work abroad and why?
2. What are your unforgettable experiences (negative and positive) while living and working
abroad?
3. Did you ever experience feeling like a stranger in your own country and family?
4. What are your goals in life and are you closer to reaching them?
5. When you were abroad, how do you plan your return home?
6. What kind of life do you want for yourself after your overseas journey?
7. What do you want to say for everyone and your fellow Filipinos who wish to work abroad?
B. DREAM CITY PROJECT
Imagine what your dream city like. You can put a name of your city and describe the things and
places that you want to see in it. Please be cautious also of the urban challenges that cities are
facing today. You may choose any application to where you create your dream city. Feel free to use
any materials available at hand.