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SUMMARY

Over the last couple of years, many scientific articles and even "express monographs" on the transformation of the world economy have been published around the world. Most of these publications were predictive. Their authors tried to predict what would happen in a year or two, how would the crisis affect the global economy as a whole and developing countries in particular. Readers were captivated by apocalyptic notes which dominated many predictions. The crisis was characterized as "unprecedented", the "deepest since the Great Depression", and even as a "turning point in the global economy."

Today, after more than two years since its inception, it becomes evident that the dreadfulness of the crisis has often been exaggerated by analysts. Indeed, the depth of the fall of financial indicators is impressive. However, the reduction in the levels of actual production, though obvious and significant, looks much more modest. Moreover, the timely departure from the liberal-market fundamentalism allowed the authorities of the leading world economies to apply quickly the levers of state regulation and seriously mitigate the most acute phase of the crisis and in some places reduce its duration.

Such a rapid transition into a phase of relative stabilization and, though uncertain, growth by itself reduced the political relevance of the grumble against banks around the world and of the rhetoric, which nearly got intense, about the need to restructure the global model of economic relations. The latter was subjected to harsh criti-

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cism with the beginning of the crisis. A whole system of intergovernmental negotiations and consultations on the restructuring of the global financial architecture (including the redistribution of votes in the International Monetary Fund and attempts to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency), global regulation of financial markets, and even on the introduction of a global tax on certain bank transactions was launched.

At some point, it seemed that the combined efforts of the young growing economies, notably of China, India, Brazil and also Russia and South Africa, which joined them, would make it all come true. However, no miracle occurred. Moreover, powerful China suddenly appeared much more circumspect and cautious in its actions than analysts from the North and Northwest expected. Having raised its position in the global economy and finance to the level desirable and achievable at this stage, Beijing chose "not to rock the boat further" in vain. The proposals to introduce a new world reserve currency were gradually muffled. Chinese authorities made tough public statements but, in fact, did not ignore Western demands to correct the exchange rate of the yuan in the light of the situation in China’s foreign trade partners.

In short, the crisis, although it has stirred some deep processes of transformation of the global economic model, has clearly not brought the situation to the verge of its actual adjustment.

Against the backdrop of the above, the results of the impact of the crisis on African economies seem interesting and illustrative. This interest is, above all, due to an ambiguous situation on the continent arising from the vicissitudes of the rampant global economic and financial disaster and from the unique African phenomenon of "prosperity in poverty". Unlike other developing regions – Asia and Latin America – the economies of sub-Saharan Africa had been growing throughout 2008 and in 2009 the region as a whole managed to avoid a large-scale recession, at least in the real sector.

At the same time the population growth of developing countries, including Africa, will significantly influence the development of the world economy. Forty-two years ago, the biologist Paul Ehrlich

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warned in The Population Bomb that mass starvation would strike in the 1970s and 1980s, with the world's population growth outpacing the production of food and other critical resources. Thanks to innovations and efforts such as the "green revolution" in farming and the widespread adoption of family planning, Ehrlich's worst fears did not come to pass. In fact, since the 1970s, global economic output has increased and fertility has fallen dramatically, especially in developing countries.

The United Nations Population Division now projects that global population growth will nearly halt by 2050. By that date, the world's population will have stabilized at 9.15 billion people, according to the "medium growth" variant of the UN's authoritative population database World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision. (Today's global population is 6.83 billion.) Barring a cataclysmic climate crisis or a complete failure to recover from the current economic malaise, global economic output is expected to increase by two to three percent per year, meaning that global income will increase far more than population over the next four decades.

But twenty-first-century international security will depend less on how many people inhabit the world than on how the global population is composed and distributed: where populations are declining and where they are growing, which countries are relatively older and which are more youthful, and how demographics will influence population movements across regions.

Even as the industrialized countries of Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia will experience unprecedented aging this century, fast-growing countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia will have exceptionally youthful populations. Today, roughly nine out of ten children under the age of 15 live in developing countries. And these are the countries that will continue to have the world's highest birthrates. Indeed, over 70 percent of the world's population growth between now and 2050 will occur in 24 countries, all of which are classified by the World Bank as low income or lower-middle income, with an average per capita income of under $3,855 in 2008.

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Many developing countries have few ways of providing employment to their young, fast-growing populations. Would-be laborers, therefore, will be increasingly attracted to the labor markets of the aging developed countries of Europe, North America, and Northeast Asia. Youthful immigrants from nearby regions with high unemployment – Central America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, for example – will be drawn to those vital entry-level and manual-labor jobs that sustain advanced economies: janitors, nursing-home aides, bus drivers, plumbers, security guards, farm workers, and the like. Current levels of immigration from developing to developed countries are paltry compared to those that the forces of supply and demand might soon create across the world.

Exacerbating twenty-first-century risks will be the fact that the world is urbanizing to an unprecedented degree. The year 2010 will likely be the first time in history that a majority of the world's people live in cities rather than in the countryside. Whereas less than 30 percent of the world's population was urban in 1950, according to UN projections, more than 70 percent will be by 2050.

Lower-income countries in Asia and Africa are urbanizing especially rapidly, as agriculture becomes less labor intensive and as employment opportunities shift to the industrial and service sectors. Already, most of the world's urban agglomerations – Mumbai (population 20.1 million), Mexico City (19.5 million), New Delhi (17 million), Shanghai (15.8 million), Calcutta (15.6 million), Karachi (13.1 million), Cairo (12.5 million), Manila (11.7 million), Lagos (10.6 million), Jakarta (9.7 million) – are found in lowincome countries. Many of these countries have multiple cities with over one million residents each: Pakistan has eight, Mexico 12, and China more than 100. The UN projects that the urbanized proportion of sub-Saharan Africa will nearly double between 2005 and 2050, from 35 percent (300 million people) to over 67 percent (1 billion). China, which is roughly 40 percent urbanized today, is expected to be 73 percent urbanized by 2050; India, which is less than 30 percent urbanized today, is expected to be 55 percent urbanized by 2050. Overall, the world's urban population is expected to grow by 3 billion people by 2050.

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This urbanization may prove destabilizing. Developing countries that urbanize in the twenty-first century will have far lower per capita incomes than did many industrial countries when they first urbanized. The United States, for example, did not reach 65 percent urbanization until 1950, when per capita income was nearly $13,000 (in 2005 dollars). By contrast, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines, which are approaching similar levels of urbanization, currently have per capita incomes of just $1,800– $4,000 (in 2005 dollars).

International terrorism might also originate in fast-urbanizing developing countries (even more than it already does). With their neighborhood networks, access to the Internet and digital communications technology, and concentration of valuable targets, sprawling cities offer excellent opportunities for recruiting, maintaining, and hiding terrorist networks.

During the Cold War, Western strategists divided the world into a "First World," of democratic industrialized countries; a "Second World," of communist industrialized countries; and a "Third World," of developing countries. These strategists focused chiefly on deterring or managing conflict between the First and the Second Worlds and on launching proxy wars and diplomatic initiatives to attract Third World countries into the First World's camp. Since the end of the Cold War, strategists have largely abandoned this threegroup division and have tended to believe either that the United States, as the sole superpower, would maintain a Pax Americana or that the world would become multipolar, with the United States, Europe, and China playing major roles.

Unfortunately, because they ignore current global demographic trends, these views will be obsolete within a few decades. A better approach would be to consider a different three-world order, with a new First World of the aging industrialized nations of North America, Europe, and Asia's Pacific Rim (including Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as China after 2030, by which point the one-child policy will have produced significant aging); a Second World comprising fast-growing and economically dynamic countries with a healthy mix of young and old inhabitants

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(such as Brazil, Iran, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam, as well as China until 2030); and a Third World of fast-growing, very young, and increasingly urbanized countries with poorer economies and often weak governments (including African countries).

The aging industrialized countries can also take various steps at home to promote stability in light of the coming demographic trends. First, they should encourage families to have more children. France and Sweden have had success providing child care, generous leave time, and financial allowances to families with young children. Yet there is no consensus among policymakers – and certainly not among demographers – about what policies best encourage fertility.

More important than unproven tactics for increasing family size is immigration. Correctly managed, population movement can benefit developed and developing countries alike. Given the dangers of young, underemployed, and unstable populations in developing countries, immigration to developed countries can provide economic opportunities for the ambitious and serve as a safety valve for all. Countries that embrace immigrants, such as the United States, gain economically by having willing laborers and greater entrepreneurial spirit. And countries with high levels of emigration (but not so much that they experience so-called brain drains) also benefit because emigrants often send remittances home or return to their native countries with valuable education and work experience.

One somewhat daring approach to immigration would be to encourage a reverse flow of older immigrants from developed to developing countries. If older residents of developed countries took their retirements along the southern coast of the Mediterranean or in Latin America or Africa, it would greatly reduce the strain on their home countries' public entitlement systems. The developing countries involved, meanwhile, would benefit because caring for the elderly and providing retirement and leisure services is highly labor intensive. Relocating a portion of these activities to developing countries would provide employment and valuable training to the young, growing populations of the Second and Third Worlds.

The changes in the global demographic picture are swift by historical standards and confront most countries with the problem of

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mass migration. Demographically "aging" countries of the North face the burning issue of "compensating" for natural population decline with the inflow of people from southern regions that have relatively "excessive" population growth. Russia, which occupies one of the leading positions in the world in terms of physical "volume" of migration, still doesn’t have a developed and implemented articulate migration policy. Meanwhile, the processes of depopulation have been taking place in a large number of Russian regions for many decades and have led to both an absolute decline in population and to the growing deficit of economically active population. Both have serious economic, social and political repercussions. Therefore the issue became one of the key obstacles to the country’s overall development and directly affects the image of Russia in the modern world.

The monograph for the first time in domestic science aims to provide a comprehensive study of migration from the South and the East to the North and the West, as well as Africa's role in these processes. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of economic and other activities of immigrants, the impact of migrants’ remittances on the balance of payments of donor and recipient countries, the issues of preservation of cultural and civilizational identity of a host society, the regulation of labour and reduction of illegal migration and associated criminal and shadow economy.

The intensification of migration flows from the South to the North is primarily associated with the aging of population in developed countries. Demographically "aging" countries of the North face the burning issue of "compensating" for natural population decline with the inflow of people from southern regions that have relatively "excessive" population growth. The processes of depopulation of a large number of European countries and Russian regions have been taking place for many decades and have led to both an absolute decline in population and to the growing deficit of economically active population. Both have serious economic, social and political repercussions.

Population shortfall in the North, including in Russia, doesn’t of course mean inviting everyone to migrate to a new place without

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any selection. In recent years, host countries have increased selectivity in terms of professional skills and qualifications of immigrants. Priority is given firstly to specialists capable of working in high-tech industries, and secondly to specialists in industries of middle technological level that lack sufficiently skilled manpower. The first kind of selection is more typical of Western Europe and the U.S., the second one - of Russia. In the latter case, specific mechanisms for the mobilization of labour resources, their territorial distribution and rational utilization have not been yet sufficiently developed.

However, the main cause of labour migration from the South to the North continues to be the income inequality of developed and developing countries. In 1975 the average per capita income in highincome countries was 41 times higher than in low-income countries, but presently this gap is equal to 66. Therefore, many Africans consider emigration to be the only way to improve their living conditions and the living conditions of their families.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs from developed countries are also interested in using immigrant labour. This is due, primarily, to the desire to reduce production costs (particularly labour costs) as well as to the necessity to mobilize manpower during periods of production growth and to a shortfall of workers in industrial sectors with harsh or adverse working conditions. In the era of economic globalization the reduction of production costs is essential to competition in domestic and foreign markets.

Another reason for the intensification of migration flows in African countries is the backward structure of employment in some states of the continent. More than half of the working population of Africa is engaged in small-scale low-productivity agriculture, which is facing competition from the modern and state-subsidized agricultural sector of developed countries. Millions of rural families in Africa go bankrupt each year and join the ranks of domestic (village - city), regional and international migrants.

Modern emigration from Africa is made up of very inhomogeneous flows, which fact clearly determines the differentiation of their socio-economic impact on host societies. Some of these flows

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are initiated by a host country, and then they are subject to regulation, but a substantial proportion of immigrants is accepted on humanitarian grounds or arrives illegally, without being subjected to selection or control.

In the structure of migration, there are four main categories: economic migrants, reuniting family members, refugees and illegal migrants; the ratio between these categories varies in individual countries. Because of the relatively low proportion of migrants who are motivated by better employment opportunities, the volume and structure of immigration do not always correspond to the basic economic needs of a host society. Its impact on the level of economic activity and on the ratio of working and non-working population is twofold.

In terms of national composition of immigrants, groups that are ethnically distant from core populations of receiving countries tend to dominate. Ethnical differences are often accompanied not only by other types of demographic behaviour of migrants (e.g. large families), but also by considerable difficulties in the adaptation of migrants to their new environment.

The latter circumstance leads, on the one hand, to extra spending by host countries, and, on the other hand, to the active use of traditional and alternative ways of living by migrants, which facilitates wide dissemination of types of economic activities based on ethnic solidarity (ethnic economy). A “black labour” market also forms in host countries, which acts as a mechanism for using illegal labour migration in order to increase profits through using cheap labour.

Although the level of education and professional qualifications of immigrants, as well as of indigenous populations, has an obvious tendency to increase, in general it is usually lower than that of local residents, and the professional and qualification composition of immigrants is more polarized.

In recent years, besides quantitative changes, there took place significant qualitative changes in migration movements from the South to the North.

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