Course code & title: GEO 2304 Population Geography
Professor: Dr. Shen Jianfa
Student ID: 98518901
Dept &
Year: Geo
A
reviewing report on Ronald Skeldon(1997),
“Rural-to-Urban
Migration and Its Implications for poverty Alleviation”,
Asia-Pacific
Population Journal, 12(1),pp3-6,
Http://www.undp.org/popin/regional/asiapac/ap,htm
The reviewed paper stated the problems
of poverty particularly in the ESCAP rural regions. There is significant
interaction between urban and rural, which suggests that any programme that focuses solely on the either sector can’t
help reducing poverty. However, policies that accept wider mobility of the
population are likely to enhance the well being of greater numbers of people.
However, the existing population data
are usually underestimating the effect of migration to the actual population.
It is particularly difficult to identify long term and short term migrants, but
the effect of short-term migrants cannot be ignored. For example in
One of the indicator that the existing
measures are underestimating the population, is the National Migration Survey
of Thailand, it suggests that the population can be triple counted. Nevertheless, migration becomes a more
expanded part in urban growth, as there is a trend of growing internal and
international migration.
Urban growth is most
significant in Asian regions recently, however, most of the poor are found to
be in the rural areas despite the trend of rural-urban migration. Hence the
author would
like to deals with the associated problems of the
existing situation, in the contest of Asian countries, which includes:
1.
whether rural-urban migration would further
impoverished rural areas,
2.
whether rural-urban migrants would pauperized
and degraded,
3.
whether rural poverty would transfer to the
urban sector,
4.
and the gender
implications of the migration.
However, I won’t quote
all the examples the author has used, but to include a table, which is a
summary of data of various Asian countries in this report.
The author
ahs a very positive attitude to all the questions. Firstly, it
is found that always not the poorest move, as they cannot afford the moving
cost, mobility of educated youth is higher as they can to seek for a higher income job cross-regions. Hence, migration
seems to exacerbate rural poverty by depriving the local elite, however poverty
can be improved by the remittances from the urban-goers, it would properly have
positive economical feedback locally.
On the other hand,
returned migrants would introduce new ideas on agricultural techniques,
entrepreneurial activities, and even new attitudes towards family size that may
encourage family planning and would ease dependency burdens. Thus rural-urban
migration can help to alleviate rural poverty.
Although rural-urban
migrants are not the poorest and least educated, they are still poorer and less
educated than urban residents. However, they have higher labor participation
rates, and generally enter a wide range of activities usually in the informal
sector, as formal employment is not large enough to meet the rapid urban growth
especially in developing countries, but the informal sector can provide more
jobs. But the informal sector is not only for the migrants, local residents
also enter the sector, and the overall migrant/non-migrant difference is
insignificant in terms of job nature. However, migrants from the same origin
often institutionalized to form social network, and usually control access to a
particular occupation. Thus migrants are not necessarily thrust into poverty,
and it would be an effective approach in improving conditions in the largest cities
in the developing world.
The aspect of gender is
always overlook in migration process, the mobility of women is lower because of
the lower levels in literacy, education and labor force participation in
developing countries (table 1). However, there is an increase in female
migration recently. The trend of international labor division gives the
diffusion of labor intensive industries from developed countries to the newly
industrialized economies (NIEs). Although they
usually have temporary low-paid job, without unionized, and they are still
usually double burdened to be family provider and income earner, this makes
women to become more independent and would generally improve their status.
Where large numbers
have moved out, late marriage is likely to rise and results in a decline in
fertility. On the other hand, there is an increasing demand for educated women
in urban service activities, over time the differences in level of education
between men and women would become less significant (table 1). Thus, migration
gives improvement and empowerment of women in developing countries.
After stating the
problems and answers, the author tried to suggest some policies that would help
lessening the problems. Migration policies in developing countries are usually encouraging
urban-rural migration. However it usually involves limitation on
labor-intensive industries, which enable rapid development, and there is a risk
to impoverish both sectors. Policies therefore need to deal with the
consequences of rural-urban migration. Existing rural programmes
are no doubt requiring strengthening and deepening. It is the social and
economic factors attract urban-goers, so government must plan accordingly.
In the context of the
urban sector, the critical policy areas revolve around how to manage large
cities most effectively but not controlling their growth. In the rural sector,
it should open a greater range of opportunities. Thus, options may lie in how
to promote the most beneficial systems of rural-urban interaction. Poverty is
ultimately a function of lacking choice; provision of choice in terms of wider
mobility might enhance the well being of grater numbers of people.
It demonstrates that
rural poverty is not transferred to the city, but to allow circulation of
goods, money, ideas, and people, between urban and rural sectors. It provides a
population that is potential for self-organization, and creates a dynamic
economy that is likely to improve the welfare of both sectors over the short
term. Migration is an integral part of development and alleviation of poverty,
but its important positive role remains largely unappreciated.
However, out-migration
in rural areas would leads to a lesser and lesser rural population,
therefore, it becomes more difficult for functioning of local government and
provision of basic services. Besides, agricultural land-use is most common in
rural areas, lose of male labor force do harm to the agricultural outputs, it
is likely that more arable land would be abandoned. As it become harsher to
make a living, it would become a push factor that rural people want to leave.
In fact, migration in
most of the developed countries is an equilibrating or cumulative process in
order to achieve a more optimal pattern of labor allocation. It is stimulate by
inter-regional disparities in unemployment. Labor vacancies and wage rate, in
result, may destroys such disparities by siphoning off surplus labor in some
areas and eliminating labor shortages in others. Urban-rural migration may
finally found, because of the rural industrialization that creates jobs, and
the desire of better living environment. Hence, it is more serious the
rural-urban migration becomes a problem in less developed countries.
From the viewpoint of
behaviorism, people usually move to more desirable location, information
diffusion from destinations to origins through friend-and-relative effect are
usually over-evaluated, then the people remained would like to move, too. But
the kind of diffusion is the most dominant; therefore people are usually moving
with a biased perception.
Besides, attachment to
old place seldom occurred among the youth, those with the highest mobility,
therefore, back-flow of out=goers is not always
possible. In developing countries, information diffuses almost in one-way that from
the higher-order centers to lower-order centers, the satisfactory idea of city
cores are brought by the social link, as a result net out-migration may result.
Besides, the remittance
may help to improve poverty condition in the rural areas, however, as the
author said, it would also widen the wealth gap. Moreover, usually the people
left behind in the rural areas are the elders, women, and children, they are so
call ‘dependent population’, and remitted money may usually use in the welfare
of them, for example, education and health care.
Recently, there is a
trend that women’s out-migration is increasing, children may send to larger
towns for better education, it may worsen the problem. As more and more elder
are being left, it finally will result in an aging population, if there is no
measures to deal with, it will become a problem.
When more and more
people migrate to urban areas, economically, there would be underused of social
capital stock and infrastructure in areas of net out-migration and for the inflationary
effects on housing and other sectors in areas of appreciable net in-migration.
Policies that planned to deal with the problem are always come into an
unsatisfactory result. Apart from the forced migration in planned economies,
other policies like spontaneous deconcentration of
urban core and resistance to migrant are not effective in controlling
migration.
For those who migrated
to the urban areas, although they have a high labor force participation rate,
they are usually the less educated and less skilled and only able to find
low-paid jobs, and have to work longer hours. They form a deteriorated group in
the urban areas. As a group from the same origin, they may like to live nearby,
and may produce a decayed zone. But they are still urban resident that requires
basic welfare, and thus create urban poverty. As mentioned before, the new
migrants can only afford to live in a decayed zone, or the old urban areas, the
problem of urban decay may become more serious.
Traditionally, women are
usually of least mobility, however, there is a trend
that mobility of women are rising. When they move to the urban areas, they can
only find poorer-paid job than man, as the education level is usually lower
than men. Although they may gain more independence, it may not indicate that
poverty in both rural and urban areas can be alleviated.
It would appear that
female migration help poverty alleviation when the education level of them is
higher; it increases their earning ability so they can seek for a higher income
job. However, in the developing countries, female has few chances to go to
school, and the education level is no doubt lower. Therefore though the labor
force participation of them is higher than before, they still practice lower
positions in firms.
Hence, whether the problem, would be worsening or improving, it depends on the
balance of the above factors. Policy is the best mean for the balance. The
government should lessen the regional difference in a various aspects, so to
attract the rural resident to stay. Rural development is necessary fro this
purpose, in order to provide attractiveness.
However, the author has
not suggested any possible measure to fulfill this purpose, but only provide an
approach in policy planning. The author believed that policies should be
planned in accordance with the trend and not to discourage rural-urban
migration, incentives to the informal sectors would do well to the situation.
For example,
construction of infrastructures, setting up institutional industries, establishment of new public housing estates is the possible
measures. However, when this is to carry out in the developing countries, it
usually appears that the projects involve large amount of money that the
government cannot afford.
Restricted residence or
forced migration seems to be the most possible and effective way for the
government to control the movement of people. But it is difficult to deal with
the people who are not willing to move. Besides, the problem of compensation
would be a heavy burden for the government.
However, the objective
of the report is aiming on the discussion ‘whether rural-urban migration would
enhance the well being of both the origins and destinations’, and the argument
that ‘policies that accept wider mobility would be better’, therefore it is
reasonable for the author not mentioning the possible measures.
The numerical data and
other evidence used by the author are mainly cited from:
Banerjee, B. (1983). “Role of the
informal sector in the migration process: a test of probabilistic migration
models and labor market segmentation for
Skeldon, R. (1986). “Migration and
the population census in
United Nations (1996). World Population Monitoring 1993 (
UNDP (1991). Human
Development Report 1991 (
World Bank (1990). World Development Report 1990 (
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