Introduction
Globalization has a great impact on social-economic relations between people and their location. Critics admit that globalization leads to a new division of labor and increased number of urban poor around the world. The slums of global cities are not uniform; in some, dwellings are constructed from brick and have proper windows and doors and tiled or corrugated iron roofs; in others, they are shacks made from whatever materials come to hand. In the settlements of the rag-pickers, the hutments merge into the piled-up refuse for recycling and into the tips themselves. The close proximity of dwellings and the presence of inflammable materials make them dangerous fire risks.
Globalization and social changes in rural areas lead to increased number of urban poor and slums in megacities.
Discussion section
Globalization and urban poor
The combination of poverty of diet, overcrowding, unclean water, lack of sewerage and often also industrial pollution, means that the people of the slums are prey to disease. Annually there are reports of widespread fires in the slums and high death tolls. With narrow lanes and lack of proper water supplies, fire fighting is difficult Mosquitoes breed in fetid water and spread malaria; cholera, hepatitis and typhoid break out periodically (Stiglitz, 2002). Tuberculosis is common. It is only when the slums are seen as a source of epidemics in the wider community that any of this becomes an outrage. Ill health of the slums is not regarded as being newsworthy, but that the relatively small number of plague cases were given massive publicity which galvanized the municipal authorities into programs of clearance (MacGillivray, 2005).
Globalization increases number of poor and marginalized people deprived a chance of employment. Many of the inhabitants of the slums are ‘ecological refugees’, those people forced from the land by ‘development’ or environmental degradation. There are 50 million people in China who have been displaced from their homes by ‘development’ projects. Given that there is a shortage of cultivable land for ‘oustees’, a significant but unknown proportion of these come as destitutes to the urban centers with few relevant skills and only their labor to sell, refugees in their own country (Stiglitz, 2002). Everything that is consumed in the towns has to be paid for – there is no subsistence sector; every scrap of land for a shack has a rent attached; there is no space to cultivate, no wild products or common grazing, no source of free fuel. Even water may be charged for. Often men who come to the towns in search of a cash income will try to leave their dependants in the rural areas in order to cut living costs, but also to protect them from the conditions of the towns. The very poorest families will need to mobilize the labor of all their members who may well work as a unit, for example on construction sites. There are also the children who have run away from home, been orphaned or deserted who live by their own wits. Urban poverty is intimately connected with globalization. As a consequence, so long as there is greater economic growth in the towns than in the villages, economic growth will not lead to increased wages for urban workers (Osterhammel, and Petersson. 2005).
Globalization and slums
Globalization, which brought new technologies and economic relations to the third world, limits opportunities of poor people to receive education and earn for living. The residents of affluent and middle-class areas are becoming increasingly afraid of the proximity of the urban poor and are sealing themselves off in gated communities with considerable amounts of surveillance and guarding. Even amongst the poor there are social divisions, none more significant than social position in society, and one finds that the class are likely to be dominated by one, or a restricted range of close class-based communities. They will also be differentiated by region of origin, so settlements will often have a clear identity emerging from the fact that rural networks are transferred into urban areas to form a basis for mutual support. The caste-based nature of the class leads to their becoming mobilized as vote-banks. Politicians descend upon them at election time to hand out small favors like sweets and alcohol in order to win blocks of support (Stiglitz, 2002).
Laborers on the building sites are recruited from the slums, often to work in almost entirely unregulated conditions and considerable danger. But the building spree has forced increasing numbers of slum settlements to be cleared to make way for up-market developments. The slum clearances are rarely carried out for the benefit of slum dwellers who have no rights to their dwellings or to compensation when these are cleared. A marginalized group is the people who have been accused of a criminal offence but not brought to trial. Whereas the politicians, extortionists and sons of the influential who find themselves in this position generally manage to get released on bail, the poor rot in prison. If there is no one to stand bail or to bribe the police or to pay for the case to reach the courts, people can wait for years on trivial charges, often for much longer than the maximum sentence for their alleged crime. It is impossible to do more than hint at the struggle of the daily life of poor people in the cities, where there is no organized system of relief and no prospect of any in the future (Osterhammel, and Petersson. 2005).
Conclusion
In sum, innovation and new business relations brought by globalization result in increased poverty and marginalization of many poor people. Urban poverty declines only when there is a growth in regulated labor intensive industries, but, the tendency has been towards investment in high productivity, capital intensive industry with ancillary outsourcing of labor intensive production in the informal sector, where wages are driven down by the excess of available unskilled and semi-skilled labor. obviously, people who live in illegal ‘colonies’ have no access to municipal street cleaning, public lighting, road repairs, or to the protection of the public health department.
References
MacGillivray, A. (2005). Globalization. Carroll & Graf.
Osterhammel, Jurrgen, and Nieles P. Petersson. (2005). Globalization: A Short History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and its Discontents, London: Allen Lane.