The Global Sociology Blog

Via the Guardian, this beautiful and ginormous graphic projecting urban populations and megacities (click on image for full view):

As the article notes:

“Chengdu made the headlines in Britain late last year when it exported two pandas to Scotland, and it is developing a reputation as the centre of Sichuan’s prized cuisine. But few in the west have paid much attention to the astonishing rise of Chengdu, despite a population (including its rural hinterland) of more than 14 million and its evident economic power and growing sense of self-confidence. Few have heard much either of cities like Ghaziabad, Surat or Faridabad in India, or of Toluca in Mexico, Palembang in Indonesia or Chittagong, the Bangladeshi port. Or of Beihai, another Chinese city on the northern coast. But this is likely to change. Each of these cities is among the fastest-growing settlements in the world. Their cumulative growth is set to usher in a new era of city living, changing the face of the planet. Beihai, which already has 1.3 million inhabitants, is set to double its population in seven years. The municipality of Chengdu will reach 20 million. Ghaziabad, now itself part of the urban sprawl of the Indian capital Delhi, is already home to nearly four million people.

Crucially, though experts estimate that the number of megacities of more than 10 million inhabitants will double over the next 10 to 20 years, it is these less well-known cities, particularly in south and east Asia, that will see the biggest growth. Predicting what the new era will bring is taxing economists, senior businessmen, security experts and strategists across the world.

Optimists see a new network of powerful, stable and prosperous city states, each bigger than many small countries, where the benefits of urban living, the relative ease of delivering basic services compared to rural zones and new civic identities combine to raise living standards for billions. Pessimists see the opposite: a dystopic future where huge numbers of people fight over scarce resources in sprawling, divided, anarchic “non-communities” ravaged by disease and violence.

Nowhere is this more evident than in India, where years of underinvestment, chaotic development and rapid population growth have combined with poor governance and outdated financial systems to threaten an urban disaster.”

Now go read Saskia Sassen’s The Global City and Mike Davis’s Planet of Slums. The future will be urban.

I am somewhat convinced that parts of the fear of globalization in certain circles have to do with the fear of the loss of white people privilege and dominance worldwide.

For instance:

“For the first time, non-white people make up the majority of Brazil’s population, according to preliminary results of the 2010 census.

Out of around 191m Brazilians, 91 million identified themselves as white, 82m as mixed race and 15m as black.

Whites fell from 53.7% of the population in 2000 to 47.7% last year.

The once-a-decade census showed rising social indicators across Brazil as a result of economic growth, but also highlighted enduring inequalities.

The census was conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

“It is the first time a demographic census has found the white population to be below 50%” it said in its report.

The number of people identifying as black rose from 6.2% to 7.6%, while the number saying they were of mixed race rose from 38.5% to 43.1%.

Among minority groups, 2m Brazilians identified themselves as Asian, and 817,000 as indigenous.”

And this:

It is not surprising that we are talking about BRIC countries here, the country block that is on the rise. As the article notes:

“MORE Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country. Some 22m ethnic Indians are scattered across every continent. Diasporas have been a part of the world for millennia. But today their size (if migrants were a nation, they would be the world’s fifth-largest) and the ease of staying in touch with those at home are making them matter much more. No other social networks offer the same global reach—and shrewd firms are taking notice. Our map highlights the world’s top 20 destinations for Chinese and Indian migrants.”

On a global scale, things look like this:

And, of course, for full comic effect, there is this:

This perfectly illustrates white anxieties at being (economically) dominated by non-white people (I am old enough to remember the same type of fears when our economies got flooded with Japanese consumer goods in the 1980s).

Globalization was fun when it meant exploiting non-white people out of sight and out of mind, busting unions here, and getting cheap goods for our troubles. But the with the crisis, the now self-imposed structural adjustment policies, the challenges posed by BRIC countries, heck, the EU asking China for help, it’s no fun anymore.

See here.

Via Urban Demographics:

According to the post, there are seven drivers to population growth:

1. Higher incomes
2. January temperature
3. Proximity to ports
4. Higher density level (not too high)
5. Education level
6. Low manufacturing employment
7. Limits to housing supply

See here also:

“1. Population growth was much higher in counties with higher incomes as of 2000. Americans unsurprisingly moved to areas that deliver higher wages.

2. January temperature continues to be a strong predictor of population growth. This fact reflects both a natural affinity for warmth, and also the tendency of many Sunbelt areas to have fewer barriers to building.

3. Population growth was faster near ports. While 19th century Americans populated the American hinterland, 21st century Americans are moving to the country’s periphery.

4. People are moving to dense areas, but not the densest areas. Despite the decline in transportation costs, people are still disproportionately moving to places that had higher density levels as of 2000, responding to the enormous productivity advantages associated with proximity.

5. The education level of a county as of 2000 strongly predicts population growth over the last decade. Again, this trend reflects the tendency of skilled areas to generate far higher incomes.

6. Manufacturing employment predicts lower population growth. While manufacturing has predicted urban decline for decades, the connection between manufacturing and lower levels of growth across all U.S. counties is a more recent phenomenon.

7. Limits to housing supply that come from either nature or regulation will also limit population growth. The most expensive areas have not grown all that much and the areas that have grown most demonstrably are not that expensive.”

This is an incredibly awesome interactive tool on emigration / immigration (where people come from and where they go) om a global scale (via Urban Demographics):

Seriously, go play with it. You’ll thank me.

Because, well…

As the article notes:

“The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.

(…)

Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”

The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly 6 of every 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, is stark. The Mexican census recently discovered four million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.

American census figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center also show that the illegal Mexican population in the United States has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the United States in 2010, down from about 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. Although some advocates for more limited immigration argue that the Pew studies offer estimates that do not include short-term migrants, most experts agree that far fewer illegal immigrants have been arriving in recent years.

The question is why. Experts and American politicians from both parties have generally looked inward, arguing about the success or failure of the buildup of border enforcement and tougher laws limiting illegal immigrants’ rights — like those recently passed in Alabama and Arizona. Deportations have reached record highs as total border apprehensions and apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen by more than 70 percent since 2000.

But Mexican immigration has always been defined by both the push (from Mexico) and the pull (of the United States). The decision to leave home involves a comparison, a wrenching cost-benefit analysis, and just as a Mexican baby boom and economic crises kicked off the emigration waves in the 1980s and ’90s, research now shows that the easing of demographic and economic pressures is helping keep departures in check.

In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they had once been. The pool of likely migrants is shrinking. Despite the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about 2 children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures. So while Mexico added about one million new potential job seekers annually in the 1990s, since 2007 that figure has fallen to an average of 800,000, according to government birth records. By 2030, it is expected to drop to 300,000.”

It will be interesting to see the short and middle-term impact of having more jobseekers in Mexico, and far fewer immigrants in the US, especially in the economic sectors where they are traditionally heavily represented.

Via the Guardian, do go check out this interactive map.

Where refugees come from:

Where they go:

It is often assumed that refugees come from the periphery and migrate to the core. In reality, of the roughly 43 million refugees, 27 million are internally displaced persons (a rising number). And the number one place for refugees is Afghanistan. A large number of refugees are usually located in countries neighboring their country of origin, meaning, a lot of refugees move from the periphery to the periphery.

Now this is a great interactive graph combining a set of indicators on quality of life:

OECD Better Life Initiative via kwout

Each flower represents a country. Each petal is an indicator and the size of the petal reflects how well or how poorly each country is doing on the indicator.

Health:

OECD Better Life Initiative via kwout

Education:

OECD Better Life Initiative via kwout

Work-Life balance:

OECD Better Life Initiative via kwout

Go ahead, go play with the data. It’s amazing.

Via my comrade-in-arms, Karl, over at Real Sociology, a very nice series of visuals based on the classical demographic exercise of reducing the world to 100 people (with more here), my favorites:

Stratification:

Education:

Freedoms:

Go check out the other ones.

And here are some more great interactive visuals, but this time, on the European population. Scroll the tab thingie at the bottom and watch the population changes for each European country:

Via The Guardian, some awesome, interactive graphs on world population:

What will happen to the world’s population? Visualised | News | guardian.co.uk via kwout

There is a lot more at the link. So. go check it out.

Via Urban Demographics, this very neat series of interactive visuals from the McKinsey Quarterly:

Global cities of the future: An interactive map – McKinsey Quarterly – Economic Studies – Productivity & Performance via kwout

Via Flowing Data:

If I wanted to nitpick, I would note that population does not grow homogeneously but largely in the periphery while overconsumption of resources is a core and semi-peripheral phenomenon. But, heck, it is a preview and one needs to read the full feature:

“People packed into slums need help, but the problem that needs solving is poverty and lack of infrastructure, not overpopulation. Giving every woman access to family planning services is a good idea—“the one strategy that can make the biggest difference to women’s lives,” Chandra calls it. But the most aggressive population control program imaginable will not save Bangladesh from sea level rise, Rwanda from another genocide, or all of us from our enormous environmental problems.

Global warming is a good example. Carbon emissions from fossil fuels are growing fastest in China, thanks to its prolonged economic boom, but fertility there is already below replacement; not much more can be done to control population. Where population is growing fastest, in sub-Saharan Africa, emissions per person are only a few percent of what they are in the U.S.—so population control would have little effect on climate. Brian O’Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has calculated that if the population were to reach 7.4 billion in 2050 instead of 8.9 billion, it would reduce emissions by 15 percent. “Those who say the whole problem is population are wrong,” Joel Cohen says. “It’s not even the dominant factor.” To stop global warming we’ll have to switch from fossil fuels to alternative energy—regardless of how big the population gets.”

In this sense, the dual power of US fossil fuel sector and religious fundamentalists is a threat to the planet and our species.

In the context of the coming dismantling of Social Security in the US and retirement reform in France, both of which amounts to making people in the lower half of the social ladder work longer, the EPI offers this:

As the article notes,

“During a panel on Social Security and overall retirement security, experts Nancy Altman of Social Security Works and Teresa Ghilarducci of The New School stressed that raising the retirement age would reduce benefits, particularly for those lower-income workers with shorter life expectancies, who depend on Social Security for the bulk of their income. They also stressed that workers are often unable to choose when they retire and must stop working when they are no longer able to perform physically demanding jobs, or when they suffer a layoff and cannot find work.”

Well, yes, and that is the point.

Via Boing Boing, variable density:

It is a nice visual, but, of course, one understands that populations are not evenly distributed across a given territory. Australia, for instance, is way more crowded on the coastal areas than one the central, more desert-like areas. As a rule, rural areas have a much lower density than metropolises. Mexico City might probably have a higher density than what is mentioned in the visual. And Monaco is a piece of rock with lots of casinos.

The next step, of course, would be to determine the impact of density on behavior.