Global Cities and Circuits of Global Labor: The Case of Manila,Philippines

The ‘global city’ concept has captured the attention of geographers and other social scientists. Research focuses predominantly on capital mobility and the important managerial role exerted by cities in the ‘developed’ realm (i.e., New York, London, Tokyo). The mobility of labor is also important and yet has been neither critically conceptualized nor sufficiently analyzed in existing studies of global cities. Using the Philippines as a case study, I examine 1) how global circuits of labor are socially organized, and 2) the extent to which this social organization is spatially concentrated in Manila. In so doing, I reaffirm the critical role played by Third World cities as global cities.