ABSTRACT
The age of contemporary globalization is characterized by ‘new geographies of flow’, and prominent among these is global migration. As Sheller and Urry (2006: 207) write, ‘all the world seems to be on the move’, and they set out a ‘new mobilities paradigm’ that seeks to challenge the sedentarist tendency in much social science (which treats stability as normal) and to highlight the liquid modernity that characterises contemporary living. Whether human trans - actional flow is cross-border or domestic, major cities have been transformed into economic spaces associated with the ‘reproduction of global capitalism’ in an advanced state of operation (see Hubbard 2008: 187-89). Such operation encompasses both highly paid skilled and professional personnel and lowly paid unskilled labour. Though opportunities may abound during this dramatic transformation – in this volume exemplified through the experiences of the expanding Asian economies – urban poverty accompanied by social exclusion and discrimination is also on the rise.
