Economic Features And Dual Labor Market Of Global Cities

In the era of globalization, the economic ties between different regions have much tightened and the spatial structure of the world economy has witnessed profound changes. With the advanced producer services, including the financial industry, gradually becoming more concentrated in main cities, global cities have become major units of the world economic activities. As the highest development level of cities, the "global city" is a concept proposed on the basis of New York, London, Tokyo as prototypes of world metropolises. A number of scholars have carried out empirical studies to prove the universality of the theoretical model of the "global city". The economic features and labor market of global cities, the polarization or professionalization of social structure, and the roles of market factors and government regulations are gradually becoming the focuses of recent studies.This dissertation attempts to focus mainly on two aspects of global cities--the economic features the dual labor market. The former is the economic base of global cities, while the latter is the social structure particular to global cities. Based on theoretical research, this dissertation takes Shanghai as the major subject of the empirical analysis and explores the economic features of Shanghai and its dual labor market. The main perspectives of the dissertation are as follows:I. The rise of global cities is closely related with the development of globalization since the latter half of the 20th century. What distinguishes global cities from ordinary cities is the fact that a global city is a key city that controls and determines the world economic operations. Hence the producer services are the most important industries in global cities. Coexistent with advanced service industries are a large number of informal sectors within the global cities, both of which constitute the economic features typical of "global cities".II. The disparity between foreign labor force and local labor force in terms of work places, income structures, etc. results in the segmentation of the urban labor market into the local labor market and the foreign labor market with their own distinctive features, both of which contribute to the formation of the dual labor market of global cities. There have been heated discussions as to whether the social structure of global cities is marked by polarization. An increasing number of scholars have come to the realization of the need to explore the above-mentioned issue from the perspectives of the national development mode and the government regulations—in particular, from the perspective that the features of the urban labor market and the government regulations have become an important aspect in interpreting the changes in the social structure of global cities.III. Shanghai is the economic center of Chinese Mainland, with the country's biggest inflow of capital from around the world. The development of the financial industry in Shanghai has undergone vicissitudes, but no doubt Shanghai has enormous potential to become an international financial center. Shanghai is shifting to an economic structure with the service industry as the pillar, in which the importance of the producer services is gaining ground. With quite a large scale, the informal employment in Shanghai is mainly staffed by floating labor. Shanghai has been ranking higher among the global cities, which means a closer link with other global cities.IV. As a global city on the rise, Shanghai has seen equal significance of the market factor and the government factor in the formation of the city's dual labor market. The household registration system, in particular, has become a major factor that exerts an influence on the segmentation of the city's labor market. There are disparities between the local labor and floating labor in Shanghai, in terms of the occupational structure, the industrial structure and the income structure. While educational background fails to adequately account for the disparities, discriminative administrative policies contribute to these differences. Through the comparison of the labor markets in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taipei, we can find that discriminative administration imposed by the urban governments is a shared characteristic of the Eastern Asian global cities.V. The Shanghai downtown dual labor market, Shanghai's downtown whole labor market and Shanghai's urban whole labor market each feature different occupational structures and income structures. Some of them are in accordance with the polarization theory of the global cities labor market structural changes, while others manifest the development trend of professionalization. The occupational structures in the local labor markets of some Eastern Asian global cities, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, etc., do not comply with the predictions of the classic social polarization in "global cities", but their income distribution has manifested the trend of polarization, as is the case in Shanghai.VI. The socio-spatial differentiation of global cities reveals the spatial differences between different social groups within a city in the context of urban industrial transformation and the government regulation policy adjustment. The socio-spatial differentiation of the floating population in Shanghai exhibits an inverted U-shape. The spatial differentiation of vocational hierarchy within Shanghai's whole labor market and the floating labor market is mainly influenced by economic factors, but is also closely related with the urban industrial restructuring and the industrial transfer. Shanghai's social space is being reconstructed under the dual influence of traditional and modern factors. The direct consequence of the socio-spatial differentiation in "global cities" is the formation of the residential segregation and the residential agglomeration within the same space. The mixed-income housing may be an effective remedy for spatial differentiation and segregation, but whether it can work effectively depends on more practice and exploration.