8.1A Changing Pattern of Demand for Labour

• Globalisation of migration = way in which people and places around the world are becoming more closely linked
• It has different economic, social, cultural and political dimensions:

  • Food
  • Work 
  • Culture
  • Money
  • Migration
  • Trade
  • Communication
  • Travel
  • Poverty etc.
• Globalisation is nothing new, with people and places having past connections:

  • Trade the Silk Road trade routes covered over 6400 km across Asia to Europe from the 2nd century BCE until the mid-15th century. These routes were central to economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West
  • Colonialism during the 19th century, the British Empire controlled 25% of the world's peoples

  
• Globalisation has been responsible for changes in:

  • Global transport systems
  • Global economic systems
  • Patterns of demand for labour
  • Rural-urban migration within countries
  • International migration
  • Exploitation of global resources and rise of the transnational corporations (TNCs)
  • Global finance
  • Global communications
• The level of globalisation can be measured:

  • Economic exports and imports as a proportion of GDP
  • Social internet users as a proportion of the population
  • Political membership of international organisations
  • Physical availability of resources for exploitation (oil, wood, coal, gold, cotton etc.)
• Globalisation and migration:

  • Significant changes in the global economic system have increased disparities of wealth
  • This has altered patterns of worker demand and increased migration within (internal) and between (international) countries,
  • Shifts in manufacturing jobs from highly developed, high wage paying, economies (HDE) to less developed, lower wage paying economies (LDE), such as Mexico, parts of the EU etc, increased the demand for regionalised manufacturing workers
• • Rapid industrialisation of countries such as China and India have created a high demand for workers and has been met by rural-urban migration
  • Capital investments in emerging market economies (EME) and LDEs has created demand for workers in construction and services, which drives international migration
  • Increases in international trade has resulted in the same companies (TNCs and MNCs) operating in more than one country and employing international corporate management 
  • Migration has led to increased remittances being sent nationally and internationally 
• Rural-urban migration - push/pull:

  • Globalisation has encouraged internal migration through:
  • Mechanisation of agricultural systems creating a loss of jobs - push factor
  • Landgrabs by government and agribusinesses forcing people out of their homes and jobs - push factor but also a pull for investors
  • Investments in trade - imports and exports increasing the opportunities of jobs - pull factor
• • Internal migration gives rise to a national core-periphery system developing, which is strengthened over time  - The periphery is considered areas outside of core economic regions
  • However, this leads to uneven economic growth; where one 'core' region has a greater 'pull' than another cores

  
• • Collectively the flows of investment, resource allocation, and people is known as the 'backwash effect' 
  • This is where people, investments and resources are re-directed from the periphery to core regions
• Patterns of migration depends on the dominance (pull) of one 'core' over another:

  • Rapid industrialisation occurred in China after the government created Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
  • These policies allowed for FDI into 'special zones' that are separated areas, managed by a single administration and with its own regulations
  • As a result, more than 200 million rural migrants now work in China's main cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen with around 20 million people arriving in cities each year
  • Over the next decade, an estimated 60% of Chinese people will live in urban areas
• International migration:

  • Most international migration is to highly developed economies (HDE) 
  • Half of all international migrations are to one of 10 countries
  • The US has more international migrants than any other at 51 million in 2020
  • Germany has the second largest with approximately 15.8 million and
  • Saudi Arabia is third with 13.5 million
• • Sometimes the core-periphery process occurs at a larger, spatial scale such as the EU-Schengen agreement
  • In 1995, international borders within most EU countries were removed and allowed for the free movement of people and goods within the EU
  • Eastern European countries joined in 2007
  • Benefits include the ability to move from one EU country to another without checks 
  • Arguments raised against the agreement is the number of migrants that entered the EU (e.g. Syria) as refugees and then have access to the rest of the EU with no border controls