Lecturer: Mr.

T Moyo
Department of Sociology
Midlands State University

Rural-urban migration
Introduction

◼ Migration is a global phenomenon that cannot be

denied or reversed ever since and even before
civilization caused by economic, social, political,
cultural as well as environmental factors. Thet
(2010) regarded migration as the movement of
people from one location to another widely
associated with change of permanent residence
due to inter/intraregional disparities at both micro
and macro level. There are different types of
migration stressing from internal to international
dimensions.
Determinants of migration
◼ These are defined as the factors or forces existing which drive or
make people to migrate in the 3rd world countries.
◼ We can also refer to them as the push and pull factors.
◼ The key question in identifying the motivations of migration is
why do people migrate from rural areas to urban areas?
◼ If the push factors are more than the restraining factors, people
tend to migrate.
◼ For example, drought which was experienced between 1992/3 in
Zimbabwe forced people to migrate into big cities to fend for food.
◼ This case can be linked with the cost benefit-analysis, where one
has to weigh the costs benefits and social costs.
◼ Men and women were leaving their families in the countryside to
work to work in urban areas so that their children could have food.
Determinants: Push and pull factors

Push factors from the Pull factors in the

source area (rural) destination area (urban)
Economic and demographic Unemployment Employment opportunities
factors
Poverty Potential for improved
standard of living
Low wages Prospects of higher wages
Political Conflict, insecurity, Safety and security
violence
Poor governance, human
rights abuses
Social and cultural Discrimination based on Family reunification.
ethnicity, gender and Freedom from
religion among others discrimination
Implications of rural-urban
migration
◼ Globally, the nexus between migration and development ha sremained an
issue under vigorous academic debate. Therefore, the process of people
migrating to other areas in search of a better life is not a novel one.
◼ What has however gained currency is the increasing voluntary movement
in quest of better quality of life by low-skill and low-wage workers as well
as high-skill and high-wage workers from less developed rural areas to
more developed urban areas, especially among the poor in the developing
countries.
◼ In this regard, rural-urban migration results from the search for perceived
or real opportunities as a consequence of rural-urban inequality in wealth.
◼ This inequality and/or urban bias in development according to research
findings over the years results from the overwhelming concentration of
wealth, assets, purchasing capacity, economic activities, and variety of
services in the urban centres as well as the continued neglect and
degradation of rural environments or areas.
◼ Migration has also been identified as a survival
strategy utilized by the poor, especially the rural
dwellers.
◼ The assessment of the effects of migration on rural
areas has remained relevant since migration acts as a
catalyst in the transformation process of not only the
destiny of individual migrants but also the conditions
of family members left behind, local communities, and
the wider sending regions.
◼ One significant source of development for the rural
populace as a result of this increasing drift towards the
cities is remittances.
◼ Migrants’ remittances and the income multipliers they create are
becoming critical resources for the sustenance strategies of
receiving households as well as agents of regional and national
development.
◼ Due to rural-urban migration, households that receive these
remittances tend to use the proceeds primarily for current
consumption (food, clothing) as well as investments in children’s
education, health care, improvement in household food and
security, and water and sanitation (drilling boreholes and erection
of blair toilets).
◼ Nevertheless, the ability of remittances to compensate the labour
shortage in rural areas is still a function of the amounts and value
ofremittances received by migrants’ households at home,
especially in the developing countries.
◼ Consequently, the effects of rural-urban migration in the rural
places of origin of migrants may be manifest in two ways:-
◼ First, the rural-urban migrants send remittances to their relatives in
the rural areas and these remittance-receiving households use the
remittances for various purposes.
◼ Secondly, these rural-urban migrants execute various rural
developmental projects in their rural areas of origin. For instance
in Nigeria, most migrants coming from a particular rural
community to live in an urban area usually form rural community
associations in the urban area. These community associations in
the urban areas articulate, from time to time, the developmental
needs of their rural communities of origin and contribute resources
to execute projects such as road construction, clinic buildings, dam
construction, the award of educational scholarships to students in
the rural areas etc.
◼ Chikwuedioze K (2013), states that Igbo families
in Nigeria encouraged their family members to
migrate from rural to urban because ofthe belief
that their continued stay in the village will not
bring financial success.
◼ The drift of youths from rural to urban areas in
Zimbabwe, has seen urban population being
highly characterized by the youthful population.
◼ This phenomena has put pressure on the
government to provide employment opportunities
of which the government is failing hence the
increase in youth bulge incidents.
◼ Rural-urban migration also implies the break-up of families mostly
as the traditional roles implies that the man provides for the family
hence more males moving into the big cities in search of jobs to
fend for their families. This has been for long now being the causal
factor of infidelity among families, family disunity and the spread
of STIs amongst them HIV/AIDS.
◼ However, jobs and services are limited in urban centres, few
migrants send large cash remittances back to their families, and
most return to their villages within one year without advanced
qualifications.
◼ One benefit for returning migrants may be through enhanced social
prestige and mate-acquisition on return to rural areas.
◼ The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important
part of the urbanization process in developing countries.
Consequences of rural-urban
migration in urban areas
◼ Housing:
◼ Accounting for more than 70% of land use in most cities,
housing determines urban form and densities, provides
employment and contributes to growth (UN HABITAT,
2016).
◼ One of the biggest challenges cities face is providing
adequate and affordable housing to migrants, which is often
in limited supply.
◼ With their exorbitant housing prices, the global cities of
London, Mumbai, New York, Paris and Shanghai are also
among the major cities impacted by migration. In some
Sub-Saharan African cities, housing shortages have caused
the price of housing units to increase drastically.
◼ Education and employment:
◼ Soaring immigration directly affects the
availability of places in primary schools, and
inevitably pushes schools towards increasing class
sizes and adding classrooms.
◼ When an influx of children from migration occurs,
cities need to ramp up resources and capacity to
deal with it.
◼ Lack of such resources poses big issues for their
governments, undermining efforts to keep class
sizes down and to provide school places for all
children.
◼ Transportation:
◼ When cities grow, transportation infrastructure
becomes critical due to its importance to most
residents, organizations and governments.
◼ Migrants depend on transportation to commute,
creating increased demand for such facilities.
◼ An efficient and affordable public transportation
system plays a vital role in determining whether
migrants can integrate into their new society.
◼ Sanitation and waste:
◼ The link between drinking water and sanitation is critical because
human waste is a major source of water contamination.
◼ Migration can greatly exacerbate the challenges of managing
sewage in a city given the growth of the population, but the city
cannot always meet the demand due to insufficient capacity.
◼ The ageing of sewage infrastructure has led to leakages in some
cities.
◼ In Mexico City, estimates suggest that 25% of the city’s water
supply is lost to leaks, which not only decrease the available
supply but also allow contaminants to enter the system when water
pressures fall below a minimum threshold.
◼ Social cohesion and community integration:
◼ Social cohesion refers to how people get along with
each other in their local area or neighbourhood.
◼ This involves the interaction of migrants with other
ethnic groups and residents, and their trust in local
institutions (such as the police).
◼ Numerous migrants work and live in areas where the
population is not used to receiving newcomers or
embracing the cohesive impact of migration.
◼ Moreover, migrant labourers employed in menial and
seasonal work often do not settle in one area for
lengthy periods, which poses difficulties to strengthen
integration and cohesion.
◼ Safety and security:
◼ Several contradictory opinions exist on migration as a security issue and its
relevance to national security and human security.
◼ The context of “whose security” is a subject of debate – state or humans, developed
countries or developing countries, countries of destination or countries of transit
and origin?
◼ Some developed countries regard migration as a security issue and use it as an
excuse to instate stringent and restrictive policies.
◼ These policies limit asylum seekers’ access to safe countries, and in extreme
circumstances can lead to migrant smuggling and human trafficking, or their taking
unsafe passages en route.
◼ They also result in disparity between the protection migrants are m guaranteed
under international law and the realities they face when travelling and working
across countries.
◼ Emerging differences between the interests of migrants, city governments, and
countries excessively controlling the movement of migrants have led to a
misaligned outlook on immigration in such countries (Wohlfeld, 2014).
 PRINCIPAL POLICY RESPONSES TO
RURAL–URBAN MIGRATION IN THE THIRD
WORLD
Policy approach Rationale Types of policies and
programmes
Negative Emphasises the Closed city; pass laws;
undesirability of deportation of beggars, the
migration and seeks to erect homeless and those in
barriers to population marginal occupations;
movement bulldozing of squatter
and to forcibly ‘deport’ settlements; enforced
migrants resettlement from urban to
rural areas; sedentarisation
of nomads; registration
systems; employment
controls; restricted access
to housing; food rationing
systems; benign neglect
Policy approach Rationale Types of policies and
programmes
Accommodative Accepts migration as Slum upgrading; sites and
inevitable, and services; urban job
seeks to minimise the creation; labour-intensive
negative industrialisation;
effects in both origin and minimum wage legislation;
destination places urban skills
training; urban
infrastructural investment;
improved social welfare;
improvements in
transportation; relieving
congestion
Policy approach Rationale Types of policies and
programmes
Manipulative Accepts migration as Colonization; land
inevitable and settlement; land
even desirable in some development; polarization
cases but reversal; growth
seeks to redirect migration poles; urban, industrial and
flows administrative
towards alternative decentralization;
destinations information systems;
management of contact
networks
Policy approach Rationale
Preventive Rather than dealing with
the symptoms of migration,
attempts to confront the
root causes by tackling
poverty, inequality and
unemployment at source,
and reducing the
attractiveness of urban
areas to potential migrants
Types of policies and
programmes
Land reform; agricultural
intensification; agricultural
extension; rural
infrastructural investment;
rural industrialization; rural
minimum wages
legislation; rural job
creation; improving
rural–urban terms of trade;
reducing urban bias;
increased emphasis on
‘bottom-up’ planning;
propaganda in favor of the
rural sector