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Contemporary World Lecture 4

A World of Ideas: Global Media Cultures

There is an intimate relationship between globalization and media which must be unraveled to further understand the
contemporary world.

Media and Its Functions

Media

⸙ Means of conveying something, such as a channel of communication (Jack Lule)

⸙ The technologies of mass communication (commentators)

⸙ Print

⸙ Broadcast

⸙ Digital (internet and mobile mass communication)

Marshall McLuhan

⸙ Media theorist who declared that “the medium is the message”

⸙ It reshapes the social behavior of users and reorient family behavior (Social behavior)

• Television (1960s) and Smart phones

 The technology (medium) , and not the message, makes for this social change possible.

The Global Village and Cultural Imperialism

⸙ Different media simultaneously extend and amputate human senses

• Storytelling

Marshall McLuhan

“The technology (medium) , and not the message, makes for this social change possible.”

⸙ Television was turning the world into a “global village”

⸙ Years after McLuhan, media scholars further grappled with the challenges of a global media culture.

⸙ A lot of these early thinkers assumed that global media culture had a tendency to homogenize culture.

⸙ Commentators believed that media globalization would create a form of cultural imperialism whereby American
values and culture would overwhelm all others.

⸙ In 1976, media critic Herbert Schiller argued that not only was the world being Americanized, but that this
process also led to the spread of “American” capitalist values like consumerism

⸙ For John Tomlinson, cultural globalization is simply a euphemism for “Western cultural imperialism” since it
promotes “homogenized, Westernized, consumer culture”.

Critiques of Cultural Imperialism

⸙ In 1980s, media scholars began to pay attention to the ways in which audience understood and interpreted
media messages.

⸙ Media consumers are active participants in the meaning-making process for they view media texts (content of
any medium) through their own cultural lenses.

⸙ In 1985, Indonesian cultural critic Ien Ang noted that viewers put a lot of emotional energy into the process and
they experienced pleasure based on how the program resonated with them.

⸙ In 1990, Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes argued that texts are received differently by varied interpretive
communities because they derived different meanings and pleasures from these texts.

⸙ Cultural imperialism was contradicted by the renewed strength of regional trends in the globalization process.

⸙ Hello Kitty, Mario Brothers, Pokémon, K-pop, Sushi, Jollibee


Social Media and the Creation of Cyber Ghettoes

⸙ The democratic potential of social media was most evident in 2011 during the wave of uprisings known as the
Arab Spring. Without access to traditional broadcast media like TV, activists opposing authoritarian regimes in
Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya used Twitter to organize and disseminate information.

⸙ Emergence of “splinternet” and the phenomenon “cyberbalkanization” to refer to the various bubbles people
place themselves in when they are online.

⸙ Engaging to articles, memes and videos by like-minded individuals. As such, being on Facebook can resemble
living in an echo chamber, which reinforces one’s existing beliefs and opinions.

⸙ Global online propaganda will be the biggest threat to face as the globalization of media deepens.

 1960 Introduction of television, 1970 (1976) Idea of cultural imperialism, 1980 (1985) Critiques of cultural
imperialism began (Ien Ang), 1990 Texts are received differently by varied interpretive communities (Elihu Katz
and Tamar Liebes), 2000 Splinternet and cyberbalkanization (2011) Arab Spring , Women’s March

A World of Ideas: Globalization of Religion

Globalization Globalism Religion

Realities

 Peter Berger argues that far from being secularized, the “contemporary world is…furiously religious….”

 Religions are the foundations of modern republics

Religion for and against Globalization

 Globalization has freed communities from the constraints of nation-state but in the process, also threatened to
destroy the cultural system that bind them together

 Religion seeks to take the place of broken traditional ties to either help communities cope with their new
situation or organize them to oppose this major transformation of their lives.

 Gives communities a new and powerful basis of identity.

 Globalization does not lead to identical responses from all religious actors, but sometimes globalization is
actively pursued by religious actors (Paradox)

Example:

 Groups such as Al Qaeda oppose Westernization, but are at the same time products of this phenomenon even
utilizing the tools and techniques to achieve their own globalizing aim

Impacts of Globalization on Religion

Globalization has diverse, even paradoxical implications for religion. Globalization may have implied on faith in the
following three possible impacts:

1) Religion is being eroded.

2) Religion is being strengthened.

3) Religion is declining but it has developed new identities of hybridity.

Islam and Terrorism

• Misunderstanding and misuse of Islamic principles derive mostly from the conception of Jihad: Internal struggle
to achieve self improvement, and external struggle to fight against injustice and social oppression through
preaching and teaching.

• Extremist Muslim groups use this concept to legitimate the idea of armed “Holy War”. However, terrorism is
not necessarily related to religion, let alone to Islam.

Definition of terrorism: “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a
political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation”. (Global Terrorism Database)

• The term “terrorism” was first used during the French Revolution to describe the actions of Jacobins.
• In the 19th century, the actions of terrorists were motivated by anarchism, whereas in the 20th century
nationalism was the main cause.

Contemporary world Lecture 5.

GLOBAL CITIES

Why study global city?

• "Globalization is spatial“

This statements means two things:

• First, it occurs in physical spaces. You can see it when foreign investments and capital move through a city,, and
when companies build skyscrapers.

• Second, Globalization is spatial because it moves is the fact that is based in places.

Definition…

John Friedmann (1986,World City Hypothesis) defined world city as:

1. Basing points in the spatial organization and articulation of production and markets;

2. Major sites for the concentration and accumulation of international capital;

3. Centers of corporate headquarters, international finance, global transport and communications, and high level
business services;

4. Points of destination for both domestic and international migrants.

The Characteristics of World Cities

• The hub points in the global network are world cities.

• The term “world cities” was first coined by Patrick Geddes in 1915; he defined them as places where world’s
business was done.

INDICATORS FOR GLOBALITY

• The foremost characteristics of a global city is its economic power.

Criteria to measure the economic competitiveness of a city:

a. Market Size

b. Purchasing Power of Citizens

c. Size of the middle class

d. Potential for growth

The Cities that house major international organizations may also be considered centers of political influence

Global cities are centers of higher learning and culture

Saskia Sassen

• Sociologist, who popularized term "global city" in the 1900s.

• Her criteria for what constitute a global city were primarily economic.

• Saskia Sassen (1991)’s The Global City identified them in four ways:

1. key locations for finance and specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading
economic services;

2. sites of production, including the production of innovations, in leading industries;

3. highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy;

4. markets for the products and innovations produced.


1. Key locations for finance and specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic
services;

• Cities concentrate control over vast resources, while finance and specialized service industries have restructured
the urban social and economic order.

Not mere outcomes of a global economic machine, but specific places where internal dynamics, culture and social
structure matter.

2.sites of production, including the production of innovations, in leading industries;

 Sassen argues global cities are not only nodal points for the coordination of processes, but particular sites of
production:
 The production of specialized services needed by complex organizations for running a dispersed network of
factories, offices, and service outlets;
 The production of financial innovations and the making of markets, both central to the internationalization and
expansion of the financial industry.

Sites of Production

• Yeung and Lo (1997) include all the big cities in Asia: Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur,
Singapore and Jakarta.

• Understand it as a place where certain kinds of work can get done.

• Get beyond the dichotomy between manufacturing and services.

• “Things”, a global city produces are services and financial goods.

3. Highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy;

• Global cities are also centers of authority.

• For example, the Washington D.C may not be as wealthy as new York but it is the seat of American state power,
such that the following:

• White House

• The Capitol Building (Congress)

• The Supreme Court

• The Lincoln Memorial

• The Washington Monument

4. Markets for the products and innovations produced

• She initially identified three Global Cities which are the homes of the world's top stock exchanges where
investors buy and sell share in major corporations cited as the following:

1. The New York City, and its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

2. London City, and its Financial Times Stock Exchange(FTSE)

3. Tokyo, and its Nikkie

• New York is more decentralized and multipolar urban system.

• Tokyo with little of the cultural diversity or dynamism.

• London has a long history of a colonial, imperial city.

Three Major Aspects of Global Cities

A. Command Centers

Control, command and management centers - regulate global manufacturing production, financial transactions,
producer services and telecommunications networks.
B. Sites of Production
 Transnational corporate headquarters - house the crucial institutions of economic globalization, such as,
stock markets, advertising agencies and teleports.
 Center of cultural hegemony- concentration of cultural festivals like music, film or dance festivals in New
York.
C. Socio-cultural Infrastructure
Amin and Thrift (1994) identify three important elements:
1. Centers provide the face-to-face contact needed to generate collective beliefs.
2. Centers are needed to enable social and cultural interaction, that is, to act as places of sociability, of
gathering information, establishing coalitions, maintaining trust, and developing rules of behaviors.
3. Centers are needed to develop, test and track innovations, to provide a critical mass of knowledgeable
people and socio-institutional networks
“CENTERS OF REPRESENTATION, INTERACTION AND INNOVATION"

Second-tier global cities:

• Little consensus in the global city literature.

• Friedmann (1995) identifies Miami, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore as second-order centers.

WANNABE WORLD CITIES

• Cities which are competing for world city status, are called “wannabe world cities” (Short, 1996).

"DUAL CITIES" OR "DIVIDED CITIES"

• New concepts like "dual cities" or "divided cities“ emerged to illustrate the fact that world cities contain the
extremes of wealth and poverty.

• Disproportionate flows of skilled international migrants.

• Huge cross-border movements of financial specialists, banking professionals, managers and high-tech talents in
global cities.

Globalization and The Asia-Pacific Region

• Major cities along the Asia-Pacific Corridor are considered as the new sites of global manufacturing production.

• Yeung and Lo (1996) called this regional city system as the Asia-Pacific functional city system.

A FUNCTIONAL CITY SYSTEM is “a network of cities that are linked, often in a hierarchical manner based on a given
economic or socio-political function at the global or regional level.”

Asia-Pacific urban corridor:

• Stretching between Tokyo and north-east China, via the two Koreas, to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines,
makes up the east Asian regional city system.

• Cities networked into the functional city system but have not developed uniformly. On the top of the urban
hierarchy include the major capital exporters. (i.e. Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei).

Characteristics of a functional city:

1. Major industrial FDI recipients (i.e. Jakarta, Shanghai and Bangkok).

2. Two entrepots (Hong Kong and Singapore).

3. Some cities serve as tourist cities.

The challenges of global cities- Global cities have also their undersides, they can be sites of great inequality and
poverty as well as tremendous violence.

Pollution- Cities like Manila, Bangkok, and Mumbai are dense, their lack of public transportation and the
government's’ inability to regulate their car industries have made them extremely polluted.

Massive energy consumption- Because of the sheer size of city population across the world, the urban areas
consume most of the world's energy. Therefore, if carbon emissions must be cut to prevent global warming, this
massive energy consumption in cities must be curbed.
Terror attacks- Cities, especially those with global influence are obvious targets for terrorists due to their high
populations and their role as symbols of globalization that many terrorists despise. The same attributes that
make them attractive to workers and migrants make them sites of potential terrorists violence.

The global city and the poor- Economic globalization has paved way for massive inequality and this
phenomenon is thus very pronounced in cities.

Social polarization

• Societal Polar: the richest and the poorest members of society.

• One of the reasons of polarization is the increasing capital intensity of production and large-scale immigration of
foreign workers.

Social polarization paradox

The paradoxical relationship- between the growth of finance and producer services and the increase of an
informal economy in these cities.

Social polarization: Service vs. manufacturing sector

Services sector produces a larger share of low-wage jobs than manufacturing does.

• Scandinavia – a city who have found ways to mitigate inequality through state led social redistribution
programs.

• Mumbai, Jakarta and Manila – are developing countries and sites of contradiction. In these places it is common
to find gleaming building alongside massive shanty towns which are the rich urban cities.

• New York and San Francisco – are poor urban enclaves occupied by

• African – Americans immigrant families who are often denied opportunities at a better life.

Gentrification – act of driving out the poor in favor of newer, wealthier residents.

Examples:

• In Australian cities, poor aboriginal Australians have been acutely affected by this process. Once living in public
urban housing they were forced to move farther away from city centers that offer more jobs and etc.

• In France, poor Muslim migrants are forced out of Paris and have clustered around ethnic enclaves known as
banlieue.

Middle Class is also thinning out.

• A large global city may thus be a paradise for some, but a purgatory for others.

Conclusion

• Global city formation is a continuing and varied process.

• Asian scholars developed their own views of studying global cities in the Pacific Region.

Global city is an ongoing competitive struggle and the inherent instability of this system.

Lecture 6

GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHY
“COUPLES HAVE CHILDREN BECAUSE OF THEIR FEELINGS”

 For most, having a child is the symbol of a successful union. It also ensures that the family will have a successor
generation that will continue its name. The kinship is preserved, and the family’s story continues.

 A few, however, worry how much strain a child can bring to the household as he/she “competes” for the
parents’ attention, and, in reverse, how much energy the family needs to shower its love to an additional
member.
HAVING OR NOT HAVING CHILDREN IS MAINLY DRIVEN BY ECONOMICS.

WILL THE CHILD BE AN ECONOMIC ASSET OR A BURDEN TO THE FAMILY?

 Rural communities often welcome an extra hand to help in crop cultivation, particularly during the planting and
harvesting seasons. Rural families view multiple children and large kinship networks as critical investments.

 The poorer districts of urban centers also tend to have families with more children because the success of their
“small family business” depends on how many of their members can be hawking their wares on the streets.
Hence, the more children, the better it will be for the farm or the small by-the-street corner enterprises.

Urbanized, educated, and professional families with two incomes, however, desire just one or two progenies.
With each partner tied down, or committed to his/her respective professions, neither has the time to devote to
having a kid, much more to parenting. These families also have their sights on long-term savings plans and set
aside significant parts of their incomes for their retirement, health care, and the future education of their
child/children. It may not have the same kinship network anymore because couples live on their own, or
because they move out of the farmlands. Thus, it is usually the basic family unit that is left to deal with life’s
challenges on its own.

These differing versions of family life determine the economic and social policies that countries craft regarding
their respective populations. Countries in the “less developed regions of the world” that rely on agriculture tend
to maintain high levels of population growth.

Urban populations have grown, but not necessarily because families are having more children. It is rather the
combination of the natural outcome of significant migration to the cities by people seeking work in the “more
modern” sectors of the society. This movement of people is especially manifest in the developing countries
where industries and businesses in the cities are attracting people from the rural areas.

Countries welcome immigrants as they offset the debilitating effects of an aging population, but they are also
perceived as threats to the job market because they compete against citizens for jobs and often have the edge
because they are open to receiving lower wages.

Voters’ pressure constrained their governments to institute stricter immigration policies.

THE “PERILS” OF OVERPOPULATION

Development planners see urbanization and industrialization as indicators of a developing society, but disagree
on the role of population growth or decline in modernization

Thomas Malthus (1798)

“An Essay on the Principle of Population”

Population growth will inevitably exhaust world food supply by the middle of the 19th century (The Malthusian
Nightmare).

Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich

• Malthus’ prediction was off base, but it was revived in the late 1960s when American biologist Paul R. Ehrlich
and his wife, Anne,

They wrote the Population Bomb, which argued that overpopulation in the 1970s and the 1980s will bring
about global environmental disasters that would, in turn, lead to food shortage and mass starvation.

They proposed that countries like the United States take the lead in the promotion of global population control
in order to reduce the growth rate to zero. Their recommendations:

1. bizarre (chemical castration)

2. policy –oriented (taxing an additional child and luxury taxes on child-related products)

3. monetary incentives (paying off men who would agree to be sterilized after two children)

4. institution-building (a powerful Department of Population and Environment).


By limiting the population, vital resources could be used for economic progress and not to be “diverted” and
“wasted” to feeding more mouths. This argument became the basis for government “population control” programs
worldwide.

This worry is likewise at the core of the economist argument for the promotion of reproductive health. Advocates of
population control contend for universal access to reproductive technologies (such as condoms, pills, abortion,
vasectomy) and more importantly, giving women the right to choose whether to have children or not. They see
these tools as crucial to their nation’s development.

It’s the ECONOMY, NOT THE BABIES

The use of population control to prevent economic crisis has its critics. Betsy Hartmann disagrees with the advocates
of Neo-Malthusian theory and accused governments of using population control as a “substitute for social justice
and much needed reforms such as land distribution, employment creation, provision of mass education and health
care, and emancipation.

• Others pointed that the population did grow fast in many countries in 1960 and this growth “aided economic
development by spurring technological and increasing the human ingenuity.”

• They acknowledged the shift in population from rural to urban areas (52%-75% in the developing world since
1950) They noted that while this “megacities” are now dusters in which income disparities along
“transportation, housing, air pollution and waste management are major problems. They also become and
continue to be “ center of economic growth and activity,”

The median of 29.4 years for female and 30.9 males in the city means a young working population. With this
median age, states are assured that they have a robust military force.

“As a country’s baby-boom generation gets older, for a time it constitutes a large cohort group of working-age
individuals and later a large cohort of elderly people….”

WOMEN AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Reproductive rights supportive argue that if population control and economic development were to reach their
goals, women must control whether they will have children or not and when they will have their progenies, if any.
By giving women this power, they will be able to pursue their vocation and contribute to economic growth.

 This correlation between fertility, family and fortune has motivated countries with growing economies to
introduce their reproductive health laws, including abortion.

 High-income First World nations and fast developing countries were able to sustain growth in part because
women were given the power of choice and easy access to reproductive technologies. In the North America and
Europe, 73% of governments allow abortion upon a mother request. Moreover, the more educated the woman
is, the better are her prospects of improving her economic position.

Opponents regard reproductive rights as nothing but a false front for abortion.

Abortion is a sin in the name of God; it will send the mother to hell.

This position was a politically powerful because various parts of developing world remain very conservative.
Unfailing pressure by Christian groups compelled the government of Poland, Croatia Hungary etc. to impose
restrictive reproductive health programs, including making access of condoms and other technologies difficult.

THE FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE

They are foremost, against any form of population control because they are compulsory by nature. They believe that
government assumptions that poverty and degradation are caused by overpopulation are wrong. These factors
ignore other equally important causes like the unequal distribution of wealth, lack of public safety nets like universal
health care, education and gender equality programs.

Government have not directly responded to this criticisms but one of the goals of 1994 UN International Conference
on population and development suggests recognition to this issue. Countries in that conference agreed that women
should receive family planning counselling on abortion, the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, the nature
of human sexuality and the main elements of parenthood.

Population Growth and Food Security

Today’s global population has reached 7.4 billion, and it is estimated to increase to 9.5 billion in 2050, then 11.2
billion by 2100. The median age of this population is 30.1, with the male median age at 29.4 years and female, 30.9
years. Ninety-five percent of this population growth will happen in the developing countries. Several countries will
have tripled their population.

Demographers predict that the world population will stabilize by 2050 to 9 billion, although they ward that feeding
this population will be an immense challenge.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that in order for the countries to mitigate the impact of
population growth, food production must increase by 70 percent; annual cereal production must rise to 3 billion
tons from the current 2.1 billion

The FAO recommends that countries should increase their investments in agriculture, craft long-term policies aimed
at fighting poverty, and invest in research development.

The UN Body suggests that countries develop a comprehensive social service program that includes food assistance,
consistent delivery of health services, and education especially for the poor.

If domestic production is not enough, it becomes essential for nations to import.

Therefore, the FAO enjoins the governments to keep their market open, and eventually “move towards a global
trading system that is fair and competitive, and that contributes to a dependable market for food.”

The aforementioned are worthy recommendations but nation-states shall need the political will to push through
these sweeping changes in population growth and food security.

Conclusion

Demography is a complex discipline that requires the integration of various social scientific data. Demographic
changes and policies have impacts on the environment, politics, resources, and others. It accounts for the
growth and decline of the human species. It may be about large numbers and massive effects, but mainly about
people. Thus, no interdisciplinary account of globalization is complete without an accounting of people.

GLOBAL MIGRATION

What is Migration?

It is the permanent movement of people from one location to another across a specific boundary, internal or
international to establish a permanent place of residence.

Categories of migrants:

1. Vagabonds – they move to other place because they have to

2. Tourists – they move to other place because they want to

Types of Migration

1. Internal Migration- which refers to people moving from one area to another within one country.

2. International Migration- which people cross borders of one country to another.

Kinds of International Migrant

1. Immigrants

2. Workers

3. Illegal migrants

4. Petitioned migrants

5. Refugees

Demographers estimate that 247 million people are currently living outside the countries of their birth. Ninety
percent of them moved for economic reasons while the remaining 10 percent were refugees and asylum-
seekers. The top three regions of origin are:

1. Latin America (18 percent of global total)

2. Eastern Europe and Central Asia (16 percent)


3. Middle East and North Africa (14 percent)

On a per country basis, India, Mexico, and China are leading, with the Philippines, together with Afghanistan,
only ranking 6th in the world. The top 10 country destinations of these migrants are mainly in the West and the
Middle East, with the United States topping the list.

Fifty percent of global migrants have moved from the developing countries to the developed zones of the world
and contribute anywhere from 40 to 80 percent of their labor force. Their growth has outstripped the
population growth in the developed-countries (3 percent versus only 0.6 percent), such that today, according to
the think-tank McKinsey Global Institute, “first-generation immigrants constitute 13 percent of the population in
Western Europe, 15 percent in North America, and 48 percent in the GCC countries.” The majority of migrants
remain in the cities. The percentages of migrants in cities are 92 percent in the United States, 95 percent in the
United Kingdom, and 99 percent in Australia.

The migrant influx has led to a debate in destination countries over the issue of whether migrants are assets or
liabilities to national development. Anti-immigrants groups and nationalists argue that governments must
control legal immigration and put a stop to illegal entry of foreigners. Many of these anti-immigrant groups are
gaining influence through political leaders who share their beliefs.

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development clearly shows that native-born citizens still receive
higher support compared to immigrants.

Benefits and Detriments for the Sending Countries

Even if 90% of the value generated by migrant workers remains in their host countries, they have sent billions
back to their home countries ( in 2014, their remittances totaled $580 billion). In 2014, India held the highest
recorded remittance ($70 billion), followed by china ($62 billion), the Philippines ($28 billion), and Mexico ($25
billion). These remittances make significant contributions to the development of small-and medium-term
industries that help generate jobs. Remittances likewise change the economic and social standing of migrants,
as shown by new or renovated homes and their relatives access to new consumer goods.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) observes that in countries like the Philippines remittances “do not have
significant influence on other key items of consumption or investment such as spending on education and health
care.” Remittances, therefore, may help in lifting “households out of poverty but not in rebalancing growth
especially in the long run.

Global migration is “siphoning qualified personnel, and removing dynamic young workers. This process has
often been referred to as “brain drain”.

Fifty-two percent of Filipinos who leave for work in the developed world have tertiary education, which is more
than double the 23 percent of the overall Filipino population.

Governments are aware of this long-term handicap, but have to choice but to continue promoting migrant work
as part of state policy because of the remittances impact on GDP. They are equally concerned with generating
jobs for an under-utilized work force and in getting the maximum possible inflow of worker remittances.
Governments are thus actively involved in the recruitment and deployment of works, some of them setting up
special departments like the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training in Bangladesh; the Office of the
Protector of Emigrants within the Indian Labor Ministry; and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency
(POEA). The sustainability of migrant-dependent economies will partially depend on the strength of these
institutions.

The Problem of Human Trafficking

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation lists human trafficking as the third largest criminal activity
worldwide. International Labour Organization (ILO) identified 21 million men, women, and children as victims
of “force labor,” an appalling three out every 1,000 persons worldwide. Human Trafficking has been very
profitable, earning syndicates, smugglers, and corrupt state officials profits of as high as $150 billion a year in
2014. Governments, the private sector, and civil society groups have worked together to combat human
trafficking, yet the results remain uneven.

Integration

A final issue relates to how migrants interact with their new home countries. They may contribute significantly
to a host nations GDP, but their access to housing, health care, and education is not easy.
• Migrants from China , India, and Western Europe often have more success, while those from the Middle East,
North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa face greater challenges in securing jobs.

• In the United States and Singapore, there are blue-collar and white-collar Filipino workers, and it is the
professional that have oftentimes been easier to integrate.

• Democratic states assimilate immigrants and their children by granting them citizenship and the rights that go
with it. However, without a solid support from their citizens, switching citizenship may just be a formality.

• Linguistic difficulties, customs from the “ Old Country”, of late, differing religions may create cleavages between
migrants and citizens of receiving countries, particularly from the West.

• Crucially, the lack of integration gives xenophobic and anti-immigrant groups more ammunition to argue that
these “new citizens are often not nationals.

• Migrants unwittingly reinforce the tension by “keeping among themselves.

• The first-time migrants anxiety at coming into a new and often “strange” place is mitigated by “local networks
fellow citizens” that serves as the migrants safety net from the dislocation of uprooting oneself.

• Governments and private businesses have made a policy changes the address integration problems, like using
multiple languages in state documents.

• Training programs complemented with counseling have also helped migrant integration in Hamburg, Germany,
while retail merchants in Barcelona have brought in migrant shopkeepers to breakdown language barriers while
introducing Chinese culture to citizens.

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

• Many richer states know that migrant labor will be beneficial for their economies. 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.

Despite these various contradictions, it is clear that different forms of global interdependence will ensure that
global migration will continue to be one of the major issues in the contemporary world.

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