Locked up? The development and internal migration nexus in Colombia

Although a sizable number of studies have been exploring the migration development nexus in international settings, there is still a reduced number on internal contexts in recent years. This research aims to estimate the causal effect of origin economic conditions on internal population migration using a time series of the Colombian states between 2012 and 2019. This analysis provides a macro perspective of associations and causation between population dynamics and development in the current changes observed using spatial interaction models. Likewise, it analyses the current portray of internal migration in Colombia (defined by five-years and one-year flows). The evidence shows that the migration hump depends on the scale at which it is analyzed. At an aggregated scale, initial economic conditions are negatively associated with migration until a threshold where this relationship is reversed. The opposite is observed in the rural migrants subsample.

Nhà trọ, rental rooms for fragments of life. Temporary footprint of rural migrants in Ho Chi Minh city

In Ho Chi Minh City, private complexes of rental rooms designated in Vietnamese asnhtrọform one of the cheapest housing stocks, targeting the working-class, including internal rural migrants. This article combines the insights of both migration and urban studies to analyze the occupation of thenhtrọthrough the concept of temporariness. It addresses the tensions between present constraints and long-term plans of rural migrants as well as their translation into the occupation of the urban space. The method draws upon observations of rental housing and interviews conducted in two suburban neighborhoods of HoChiMinhCity in 2020 and 2021, with migrants coming from deltaic and coastal rural areas of Vietnam. It is found that thenh trọprovide housing for rural migrants who are in a long-term temporary situation, within a tight urban fabric with scarce opportunities for access to urban land ownership. Informants have moved to the city up to thirty years ago. Both the move and the duration are explained by multiple factors, from economic and social mutations to environmental pressures on the deltas and the coast. Relative job stability and trust-based interpersonal relationships in the city may strengthen over time, encouraging migrants to stay. Nevertheless, no matter how long they remain in Ho Chi Minh City, many migrants perceive their stay as temporary before a projected return to the hometown, where their permanent residence registration remains. The occupation of thenhtrọobserved, their adaptations, and the narratives of migrants reveal the relative nature of temporariness in migration and draw the contours of the spatial footprint of low-skilled rural migrants in Ho Chi Minh City.

Effect of self-employment on the sub-health status and chronic disease of rural migrants in China

Background Rural migrants usually suffer from major disease risks, but little attention had been paid toward the relationship between self-employment behavior and health status of rural migrants in China. Present study aims to explore the causal effect of self-employment behavior on rural migrants’ sub-health status and chronic disease. Two research questions are addressed: does self-employment status affect the sub-health status and chronic disease of rural migrants? What is potential mechanism that links self-employment behavior and health status among rural migrants in China? Methods The dataset from the 2017 National Migrants Population Dynamic Monitoring Survey (NMPDMS-2017) was used to explore the causal effect. Logit regression was performed for the baseline estimation, and linear probability model with instrument variable estimation (IV-LPM) was applied to correct the endogeneity of self-employment. Additionally, logit regression was conducted to explore the transmission channel. Results Self-employed migrants were more susceptible to sub-health status and chronic disease, even when correcting for endogeneity. Moreover, self-employed migrants were less likely to enroll in social health insurance than their wage-employed counterparts in urban destinations. Conclusion Self-employed migrants were more likely to suffer from sub-health status and chronic disease; thus, their self-employment behavior exerted a harmful effect on rural migrants’ health. Social health insurance may serve as a transmission channel linking self-employment and rural migrants’ health status. That is, self-employed migrants were less prone to participate in an urban health insurance program, a situation which leaded to insufficient health service to maintain health.

COVID-19’s Initial Impact on Food Supply Chains, Rural Migrants, and Poverty in the People’s Republic of China

This paper explores the initial impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on food, rural migrants, and other vulnerable groups, and includes policy recommendations.

Resilience and Circularity: Revisiting the Role of Urban Village in Rural-Urban Migration in Beijing, China

Recent policies in China have encouraged rural-urban circular migration and an “amphibious” and flexible status of settlement, reacting against the recent risks of economic fluctuation in cities. Rural land, as a form of insurance and welfare, can handle random hazards, and the new Land Management Law guarantees that rural migrants who settle in the city can maintain their rights to farmland, homesteads, and a collective income distribution. Existing studies have pointed out that homeland tenure can reduce migrants’ urban settlement intentions (which is a self-reported subjective perception of city life). However, little is known about how the rural-urban circularity and rural tenure system (especially for those still holding hometown lands in the countryside) affect rural migrants’ temporary urban settlements (especially for those preferring to stay in informal communities in the host city). The existing studies on the urban villages in China have focused only on the side of the receiving cities, but have rarely mentioned the other side of this process, focusing on migrants’ rural land tenure issues in their hometowns. This study discusses the rationale of informality (the urban village) and attests to whether, and to what extent, rural migrants’ retention of their hometown lands can affect their tenure security choices (urban village or not) in Chinese metropolises such as Beijing. Binary logistic regression was conducted and the data analysis proved that rural migrants who kept their hometown lands, compared to their land-loss counterparts, were more likely to live in a Beijing urban village. This displays the resilience and circularity of rural-urban migration in China, wherein the rural migrant households demonstrate the “micro-family economy”, maintaining tenure security in their hometown and avoiding the dissipation of their family income in their destination. The Discussion and Conclusions sections of this paper refer to some policy implications related to maintaining the rural-urban dual system, protecting rural migrant land rights, and beefing up the “opportunity structure” (including maintaining the low-rent areas in metropolises such as Beijing) in the 14th Five Year Plan period.

The Floating Village: Fostering Social Capital in Chinese Migrant Settlements through Mobile Architecture

<p>In the past two decades, China has realised one of the fastest and largest rural to urban migrations in the world. The country’s urban population has increased by 20% over the last 20 years due to rapid urbanisation and a drastic improvement in urban opportunities. It is projected that by the year 2020 China aims to house 60% of its population in urban areas, resulting in a population shift of over 100 million people. One of the major issues which is presented to rural migrants is the hukou system. Hukou acts as a domestic passport which prevents rural migrants from attaining social benefits within urban areas. This has created an underclass within China’s urban areas known as the “floating population”. This thesis focuses on the architecture of the “floating villages” of China which accommodate this floating population. The floating village is an informal settlement of migrant workers which develops around construction sites. The village provides services such as food, entertainment, medical care and recycling to the construction workers., However, as a pseudo-urban typology accommodating many of the functions of a town, it lacks one important element: a focused communal area. The absence of deliberately designed a communal space has led to social tensions within the floating village due to the different cultural origins of the migrant workers. Migrant workers arrive in floating villages without knowledge of urban culture and with no communal support. Varying migrant accents, and traditions, alongside struggles with poverty, creates friction between workers. This thesis proposes a temporary and portable architectural intervention within the floating village which fosters a positive community. The research of community design is explored through an architecturalisation of Dr Robert D. Putnam’s understanding of social capital.</p>

The Floating Village: Fostering Social Capital in Chinese Migrant Settlements through Mobile Architecture

<p>In the past two decades, China has realised one of the fastest and largest rural to urban migrations in the world. The country’s urban population has increased by 20% over the last 20 years due to rapid urbanisation and a drastic improvement in urban opportunities. It is projected that by the year 2020 China aims to house 60% of its population in urban areas, resulting in a population shift of over 100 million people. One of the major issues which is presented to rural migrants is the hukou system. Hukou acts as a domestic passport which prevents rural migrants from attaining social benefits within urban areas. This has created an underclass within China’s urban areas known as the “floating population”. This thesis focuses on the architecture of the “floating villages” of China which accommodate this floating population. The floating village is an informal settlement of migrant workers which develops around construction sites. The village provides services such as food, entertainment, medical care and recycling to the construction workers., However, as a pseudo-urban typology accommodating many of the functions of a town, it lacks one important element: a focused communal area. The absence of deliberately designed a communal space has led to social tensions within the floating village due to the different cultural origins of the migrant workers. Migrant workers arrive in floating villages without knowledge of urban culture and with no communal support. Varying migrant accents, and traditions, alongside struggles with poverty, creates friction between workers. This thesis proposes a temporary and portable architectural intervention within the floating village which fosters a positive community. The research of community design is explored through an architecturalisation of Dr Robert D. Putnam’s understanding of social capital.</p>

Flesh and Blood

Normative understandings of Mongolian kinship have long revolved around metaphors of flesh, blood and bone, while substantive approaches have focused on materials such as umbilical cords and photographic montages. In this article, I argue that the flesh of livestock has been largely overlooked in considerations of Mongolian kinship, and I address the role of meat in making and maintaining relations, both among people and between people and their homelands (nutag). In pastoral Mongolia, herd animals enact and enable a wide range of social relations. However, in the ethnographic context discussed here – the Ulaanbaatar ger districts – urban-rural migrants live at a distance from animals. No longer herders, their access to nutag meat is reliant on their connections to countryside relatives, rendering meat a kinship-making substance in new ways. This paper begins the work of analysing the shift from animal to meat-based enactments of relatedness in the age of the market.