Hong Kong A Global City Acting as A Special Administrative Region:

A Venue for Alienation and Inequality

A Social Investigation Strategy Proposal

presented to the Department of Philosophy

Saint Louis University

In partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the Subject

The Contemporary World (GC World)

By:

Bustillo, Rexel
Mutia, Jerico
Ferrer, Jihann
Soriano, Chabelita
Wayagwag, Erlicell

Atty. Mark Gil Ramolete

Class Code: 3500

7:30 – 9:30 MWF (P109)
 Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Methodology ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Discussion ..................................................................................................................................................... 7
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 9
References ................................................................................................................................................... 10

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 Introduction
A Global City is defined to be a city that plays an important role or a contributor to the
world economy (Seckim 2015). All global cities are home or headquarters to multinational
corporations and business investors across the globe. They are the cities that have set standards for
a modern quality of living. Furthermore, according to Sassen (1991, 126) as cited by (Renn 2012)
world cities as ‘post-industrial production sites’, where innovations in corporate services and
finance have been integral to the recent restructuring of the world-economy now widely known as
globalization.

Global cities as major contributors to the world economy are main actors of global
production and trade; economic interests of some cities have spread far beyond their geographical
boarders and boarders of the states to which they belong (Ushakov 2013). Therefore, global cities
are cities that have a high share of economic and political powers. They possess great capabilities
of making and providing noteworthy solutions for all regions in the world. Hence, a global city
must have substances that can produce global solutions.

According to Abrahamson 2004, the linkages among cities cutting across nations became
a global network. Global cities are deemed to be a global network of densely connected focal
points, each intensely competing with the other to define the best economic and political standards.
These cities have set global standards to which all the other cities in the world adhere to. That is
why global cities are often visited by a lot of foreigners from different places because of the quality
of goods, services, experiences and opportunities.

(Velikhov, 1996) as cited by (Ushakov 2013) emphasizes that global cities are much more
predisposed to commercialization and generation of new knowledge and innovations. Similarly,
(Hua n.d.) says that immigrants bring opportunities in terms of cultural and economic capital.
Immigrants enter the macro-level of development strategies through the remittances they send
back home. These represent a major source of foreign exchange reserves for the government in a
number of countries. While the flows of remittances may be minor compared to the massive daily
capital flows in global financial markets, they can matter enormously to developing or struggling
economies (Sassen n.d.).

However, global cities also pose challenges to its locals especially to the lower class.
According to The Changing Dynamics of Urban Economies 2016, the rich (either country or

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person) is getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Take for example the case of social
polarization in Hong Kong. There are serious problems on income inequality: a low-income-
poverty trap against the lower class and the spatial and economic segregation towards migrant
groups. The labor market segmentation was created, maintained and reinforced by global
economic forces which allows limited upward mobility chances for the lower classes. (Lee, Wong
and Kam Yee 2010) confirms that these ethnic minorities suffer from racial discrimination and
exclusion from mainstream Chinese society. The working migrants from other countries are
favored due to the remittances that benefits the country but are also segregated according to their
educational attainment. (Kotkin 2014) validates that the globalization of cities and their elites
often comes at the expense of many of the people who live there. Another is the case of London,
Los Angeles and Singapore, forced to compete with foreign capital and immigrant workers, native-
born residents of the cities mentioned that they often feel displaced, becoming strangers in what
they thought was their own place.

Truly, global cities are instruments of producing wealth. But the dynamics that produce this
wealth corresponds to bigger problems of alienation and inequality. With this in mind, the
researchers seek to identify the problem on alienation and inequality with global cities particularly
Hong Kong as a special administrative region in China. Also, this research proposal aims to answer
the following questions:

1. What are the social statuses of the immigrants in Hong Kong?

2. How do locals in Hong Kong get displace by their own country?
3. How are the locals and immigrants segregated in the city?

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 Methodology
This section will provide the tools that the researchers have gathered and used for their data
collection and analysis. The data will be based on existing literatures and journals from other
researchers.
The researchers will use the Market Segmentation of Lee, Wong and Kam Yee, 2010. Lee,
Wong and Kam Yee suspects that there exists a closure of professional and semi-professional labor
markets from the rest of the economy in the post-industrial hierarchy. The Market Segmentation
Diagram will demonstarte and elaborate how the locals are being alienated from their own country.
In addition to this, the data collected and interpreted on table 1 , 2 and 3 from the succedding pages
will be assessed and used by the researchers as a valid support on their claims of global cities
particulary Hong Kong as a venue for alienation and inequalities.

Figure 1:
Market Segmentation

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 Table 1: Immigrants and Median Income by ethnicity, 2001

Table 2: Proportion of Ethnic Minorities in the Whole Population District, 2001

Table 3: Proportion of PMR’s in the Whole Population District, 2001

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 Discussion
Social polarization is greatly seen in global countries like Hong Kong. It is one of the main
drivers of the experience of inequalities in global cities Sassen (1991) made a thesis regarding this
concept. According to Sassen (1991) as cited by (Lee, Wong and Kam Yee 2010) the social
polarization thesis describes how poverty and social inequalities occur in economically advanced
global cities. The thesis postulates that income polarization and occupational polarization occur as
the global city develops. Income polarization refers to the widening gap between the rich and the
poor, whilst occupational polarization refers to the expansion of jobs at the top and the bottom at
the expense of the middle ones, forming an hour-glass occupational structure in the process.
Specifically, on one hand, the traditional working class and middle managers in the manufacturing
sectors suffer job loss because of de-industrialization, deregulation and technological
rationalization caused by economic restructuring. Thus, there is a huge demand for top
administrative and professional talent for the booming financial and producer services. In order to
serve the consumption needs of top administrators and professionals, a large pool of service
workers suffer from the casualization and informalization of the employment relation and low pay
is also created. In addition, the expansion of low-skilled and low-paid jobs attracts a massive influx
of migrant workers from less-developed areas.
Similar to other global cities, Hong Kong’s immigrant population is bifurcated (Chiu and
Lui 2004; Li et al. 1998)as cited by (Lee, Wong and Kam Yee 2010): a small portion of highly
paid migrants mostly comes from advanced countries such as the US and Japan, whilst a large
portion of lowly paid migrant labor is from developing areas like Mainland China, the Philippines
and Thailand. The distribution of immigrants and their median monthly income according to their
ethnicities is presented in Table 1 in which it is indicated that non-Chinese immigrants constitute
5.1 per cent of the total population.
Concerning residential segregation, at first sight, immigrants seem to be scattered all over
Hong Kong (see Tables 2 and 3) without any significant indication of spatial segregation.
However, upon a closer look, one can find signs of the concentration of disadvantaged immigrants
in poor areas. In 2001, among the eighteen District Council districts, the Wan Chai district (18 per
cent) had the largest proportion of non-Chinese immigrants, followed by Islands (15.4 per cent)
and Central and Western (14.6 percent). As shown in Table 4, all these districts are high-income
districts. In contrast, Yau Tsim Mong (7.9 per cent) had the greatest proportion of Chinese

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immigrants, followed by Sham Shui Po (7.3 per cent) and Kowloon City (4.8 per cent); all of them
are low-income districts. There are higher proportions of non-Chinese immigrants in high-income
areas because most of the non-Chinese immigrants are live-in domestic helpers. Thus, it is not
surprising to find them residing in high-income districts.
In a global city, the industrial hierarchy is contracting. Top managers and executives can
easily move to the post-industrial system because of their wealth, good education, high-quality
general managerial skills and social networks. Meanwhile, the other labor market sectors are
shrinking due to both post-industrialization and globalization. The workers can either move to a
low-wage service market or become unemployed. In the expanding post-industrial hierarchy, there
is a moderate degree of mobility between the professional and semi-professional labor markets, as
well as between the skilled and unskilled services labor markets, but the mobility for skilled and
unskilled service workers as compared to the semi-professional labor market is far more limited.

The professional and semi-professional labor markets normally recruit entrants from
university graduates and sometimes from qualified migrants. Meanwhile, the skilled and unskilled
services labor market recruit workers from various sources: high school graduates, non-university
school leavers, workers from declining industrial sectors and migrant workers. The upward
mobility chances for them are very few because of their limited opportunities in acquiring
necessary knowledge, skills and credentials necessary for getting into the professional sectors.
Most of the time, their limited opportunities are not due to their inability but their poor working
conditions, low pay and long working hours that deprive them from attaining sufficient human,
social and cultural capital to move up.

Finally, there is a group of unemployed workers which is considered as the casualty of the
declining industrial sectors: dropouts from the low-wage service market for whatever reasons and
school leavers and migrants who are unable to find a job. These unemployed people may, with
luck, get into the market later. The longer they fail to do so, the higher the chance that they will
become the chronic unemployed, or what Esping-Andersen et al. (1993: 41–42) as cited by (Lee,
Wong and Kam Yee 2010) call ‘labour market outsiders’, who are excluded from mainstream
society.

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 Conclusion
An analysis of inequality and alienation in global cities particularly Hong Kong, reveals
the situation of their economic and social integrations. Taking into consideration that global cities
are global networks of densely connected focal points, each of these cities are intensely competing
with the other to define the best economic and political standards. The hubs of socio-economic
activities and policies imposed on their regulations affect the inequality of the populace and their
divisiveness.

Inequality among global cities isn’t necessarily a bad thing to be prevalent. Wealth
distribution is accorded to professional and administrative talents which are high paid compared
to the low skilled service workers which are low paid. Also, service workers are more on demand,
thus a low pay. Migrants as well respond to the economic opportunity in search for jobs for a better
life in global cities and fill in these demands. Cities don’t make people poor. Instead, the cities’
rich and poor have much to gain from interaction as the poor are attracted to the cities’ promise of
economic opportunity (The Two Cities: Inequality in Global Cities,2016).

When it comes to the promise of opportunities, it is rather uncertain. Small portions of

migrants get highly paid while larger portions, not so much. Lack of legal standing, low
educational attainment, and other alternatives among migrants leave them prey to human
trafficking and modern-day slavery (Inequality Around the World). Educational barriers thus are
a factor that puts a lot of pressure on lower income workers. Moreover, divisiveness among the
poor and rich can be obviously seen in residential sections of the cities. The less advantaged live
in the slums because their wages can’t afford them quality housing. In close proximities, there are
those living in air-conditioned rooms while a few distances away is a very different reality.
Economic integration among nations is a war that undermines the other displacing citizens of their
jobs and any opportunities thereafter.

In the end, economic reform of global cities to solve inequality and alienation is costly. So
is the case of ignoring these issues. The history of development patterns of political, economic,
cultural and other features is different from the other. To put it, they are victims of their own
success. Bad policy and neglect keep it that way (The Two Cities: Inequality in Global Cities,
2016).

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 References
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Ushakov, Denis. 2013. "Global Cities as Drivers of World." International Conference on
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