The Impermanence of Moves: Return and Onward Migration

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-330
Author(s):  
Robert E.B. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Rural Area ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Seasonal Migration ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Independent Data ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Onward Migration ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
At Home

Several, independent data analyses demonstrate that neither rural-urban nor urban-rural migrations are as permanent as one normally assumes; return is common within a few years. Return from rural-urban migration is more prevalent among men and the less-well-educated and is strongly associated with rejoining a spouse. Age of return to a rural area is bimodal, peaking around age 20 and among children; no evidence of return upon retirement is apparent. Across countries, more than half return to a district other than their origin. Returned migrants’ rural incomes are greater than those of people who remained at home, both on average and among measurably equivalent groups. Upward mobility in income in towns is affirmed, particularly for the less-well-educated. Seasonal migration is more common among men and the better educated and by individuals, not joint families. Seasonal migration in India as well as step and onward migration elsewhere are not as common as is popularly claimed.

Data Sources and Issues in Measurement

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Robert E.B. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
Migrant Flow ◽  
Previous Location

This chapter details the data sources deployed and the approaches to deriving measures from them. National definitions of urban settlements vary but are demonstrated to match satellite imagery surprisingly well. Most selected sources ask if the place of origin was rural or urban, though in several censuses this is imputed on the nature of the location of origin, rejecting instances where locations prove too diverse; significant contrasts are not found between the two approaches. Those sources that ask place of birth show significantly lower lifetime migration from urban to rural areas than those reporting only location during childhood; their rural-urban migration propensities do not differ. Measures of migrant flow rates, return migration, and other temporary moves require interim location information. Sources reporting the previous location and duration of residence prove more useful than those asking location five years before. A contention of symmetry between rural-urban and urban-rural migration propensities is rejected.

scholarly journals Urban-Rural Gaps in the Developing World: Does Internal Migration Offer Opportunities?

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 174-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lagakos
Keyword(s):  
Internal Migration ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Land Markets ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
Future Work

This article provides an overview of the growing literature on urban-rural gaps in the developing world. I begin with recent evidence on the size of the gaps as measured by consumption, income, and wages, and argue that the gaps are real rather than just nominal. I then discuss the role of sorting more able workers into urban areas and review an array of recent evidence on outcomes from rural-urban migration. Overall, migrants do experience substantial gains on average, though smaller than suggested by the cross-sectional gaps. I conclude that future work should help further explore the frictions—in particular, information, financial, and in land markets—that hold back rural-urban migration and may help explain the persistence of urban-rural gaps.

scholarly journals Impact of Rural-Urban Migration on Rural Children: A Micro­-level Study

2008 ◽  
pp. 65-70
Author(s):  
Sk. Sharafat Hossen ◽  
Syed Imran Ali Meerza
Keyword(s):  
Rural Area ◽  
Child Labor ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Preventive Health Care ◽  
Rural Children ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Economic Resource ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
The Impact

Rural-urban adult migration mainly adult male migration makes heavy demand on all family members, but especially on children who are left behind in rural area to shoulder the responsibility of agricultural production and food security. Labor shortage due to rural-urban adult migration may mean that children in rural area often have to face tighter time schedules and patterns of time use and flu man energy inputs required in agricultural production. The study revealed the impact of rural-urban migration on rural children. In the study, sample was restricted to households that own and/or operate agricultural land in rural area. A purposive sampling was adopted to select villages and covered 100 sample households. The study was based on link between rural-urban migration of adult persons and child labor in rural area. The empirical result showed that an additional rural migrant of a household increases the probability of having child worker in that household by approximately 51%. However, it was found that children of migrant households receive less preventive health care in their infancy. The study also showed that an additional adult worker of a household increases the probability of having child worker in that household by 29%. For this reason, this study supports the hypothesis that children are the last economic resource of a household.

Deaf people with “no language”: Mobility and flexible accumulation in languaging practices of deaf people in Cambodia

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Moriarty Harrelson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Migration ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rural Urban Migration ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Flexible Accumulation

AbstractDeaf people in Cambodia are often represented in the media as lacking language but in reality, deaf people’s repertoires and communicative practices challenge essentialisms regarding modalities and conventional understandings of “language.” Drawing on fieldwork in Cambodia, this article examines how notions of an urban/rural dichotomy devalue the communicative practices of rural deaf people. These ideologies marginalize the creative deployment of various modalities by deaf people in everyday languaging that are not commonly indexed as parts of a linguistic repertoire. Communicative practices such as drawing a picture to communicate, gestures, the use of physical objects such as city maps are devalued because academics and lay people tend to have rigid conceptualizations of language. This article calls for closer attention to modalities such as gestures, the drawing of pictures and the use of physical objects in everyday languaging to interrogate how the “invention” of languages results in distinctions between groups and individuals, especially in terms of access to linguistic resources such as a national signed language and perceptions about the use of modalities other than signing or speaking. In NGO narratives, often echoed by deaf Cambodians themselves, deaf people acquire a signed language only after rural-urban migration, which misrepresents their communicative competencies and creative use of linguistic resources. In reality, deaf people’s linguistic repertoires are constantly expanding as they enter new spaces, resulting in the flexible accumulation of languaging practices and modalities.

scholarly journals Urban-rural linkages as an urban survival strategy among urban dwellers in Botswana: the case of Broadhurst residents

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen N. Lesetedi
Keyword(s):  
Rural Area ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Urban Survival

This paper studies the role of urban-rural linkages as survival strategies and as a form of economic security in the face of increasing levels of urban unemployment. The study focuses on the residents of Broad hurst,a suburb of Gaborone, Botswana and presents the result of a survey of 360 households.The households contained 1560 people of whom 90.9% were 45 years old or less. Urban-rural linkages included the continuation of part time work and residence in the rural area and the continued management of land and livestock in the rural area. In all, 91.9% of the households interviewed owned property in rural areas while 70.3% owned residential land, 64.7% owned farmland, 63.9% owned livestock, 56.7% owned grazing lands, 14.4% owned business plots and an additional 9.4% owned other forms of rural property. Linkages with the rural area were reinforced through participation in social activities, exchange of goods and services, and the consultation with rural people primarily over family matters and the consultation by rural relatives on work or financial matters.Key words: urban-rural linkages, survival strategy, economic security, Botswana, Gaborone, Broadhurst, rural-urban migration, migrants, land tenure, property, livestock, household, rural development, urban survey. 

The Son of the Hawk Does Not Remain Abroad: The Urban–Rural Connection in Africa

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josef Gugler
Keyword(s):  
Return Migration ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Urban Migrants ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Migration Strategies ◽  
Rural Urban Migration

Abstract:Most rural–urban migrants maintain significant ties with their communities of origin in Africa south of the Sahara. Contrary to “modernist” assumptions that these ties would fade away, they often continue to be strong. This urban–rural connection has important consequences for rural–urban migration, for urban–rural return migration, for the rural economy, and for the political process. To understand the processes underpinning the urban–rural connection we need to distinguish different migration strategies and to deconstruct the notion of “rural.” Depending on their migration strategies, urban residents connect with a range of actors at the rural end: more or less closely related kin, kinship groups, non-kin groups, villages, larger political entities. These connections play out differently for men and women.

Who Migrates, Who Stays?

2021 ◽  
pp. 115-186
Author(s):  
Robert E.B. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Positive Selection ◽  
Labor Force ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Rural Migration ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Gender Balance ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Urban Migration

This chapter provides a descriptive investigation into who migrates. Reasons for concern about the gender balance in migration are set out, including the empowerment of women. Gender differences in education are estimated to be an important contributor shaping this balance. Autonomous migration by women is broadly stigmatized but shown to vary widely across countries of Africa and Asia. The long-standing evidence of positive selection on education in rural-urban migration is reaffirmed, though the more recent depiction of negative selection on urban-rural migration is less uniform. Claims that migrations between the rural and urban zones result in sorting of labor by skills are not supported. Rural-urban migration is lowering education of the labor force in towns; urban-rural migration is raising that in the countryside. Minority ethnolinguistic groups typically undertake less rural-urban and more urban-rural migration. The context in which these communities live and the policies toward them contribute to these migration patterns and are detailed in the chapter.

Country-Specific Magnitudes of Migration between Rural and Urban Sectors

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-114
Author(s):  
Robert E.B. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Migration Rate ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Sufficient Data ◽  
Flow Rates ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Migration Rates ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Rural Urban Migration

Across seventy-four countries, six migration propensities of men and women are tabulated in this chapter: notably, for gross and net, lifetime and five-year flow, rural-urban and urban-rural moves. China is purported to have the highest rate of rural-urban migration in recent history, but neither reliable estimates nor sufficient data to permit computations appear to be available. The conventional wisdom is that India has a low rural-urban migration rate, but our estimates contradict this claim. The five-year flow rates are only loosely correlated with lifetime movements. It is important to understand the situation in each country at the time of enumeration, and these specific circumstances are described in the second half of the chapter. Gross rural-urban migration rates increase at higher urbanization levels, but net rural-urban migration proves positive virtually everywhere. Yet a decomposition for twenty-two countries indicates that reclassification of rural areas as urban is far more important than net rural-urban moves in incremental urbanization.

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