Reasons for Rural-Urban Migration
The specific reasons for a family's or a large population's migration from rural to urban areas vary among time periods, geographic settings and political conditions. The reasons for such a migration also depend on various supporting conditions. What is most important, however, is each migrant's expectation that life will be better in the city.
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Formalized Economics
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Especially in developing societies and economies, subsistence farmers may be drawn to cities by the promise of an identifiable, countable wage. It's nearly impossible for rural people without experience in cash crops or surplus production to conceive of having to balance that set wage against cash cost of living.
Environmental Change
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The classic impetus for migration from farm to city is drought, though one bad season is less likely to trigger migration than a perceptibly permanent environmental change, such as desertification. Migration may be undertaken as a short-term strategy for managing a change that is perceived as inevitable but gradual. A family member from an area in its third year of drought might be delegated to the city to earn capital for new irrigation equipment or a deeper well.
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Communications and Transportation
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Rural residents must have a way of knowing about city life and a way to get to the city. In Victorian Britain, for instance, the development of an efficient railway system meant that remote residents could receive news fom the cities. Railway access also provided the means for rural populations to move to the cities.
Social Promise
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What is known particularly among African Americans as the Great Migration began with former slaves and their children seeking relief from institutional racism as well as economic struggle. However, even after migrating to cities, African Americans continued to struggle economically, at least until World War I cut off the supply of cheap labor from Europe at the same time that it heightened demand for manufactured goods.
Technological Change
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When industrialization comes to rural settings, such as when cotton picking was automated in the U.S. in the 1940s, it can so lower the demand for labor that it pushes rural populations---willing or not---to seek better markets elsewhere.
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References
- Soc. for Economic Dynamics 2004 Meeting Papers: "Rural-urban Migration and Economic Growth in Developing Countries"; D.S. Saracoglu, T.L. Roe; 2004
- Forced Migration Review: "Rural-Urban Migration in Ethiopia"; James Morrissey;
- "Economic Development," 8th ed: Ch. 8, "Urbanization and Rural-Urban Migration"; M.P. Todaro, S.C. Smith; 2010
- "Rural-Urban Migration and Socioeconomic Mobility in Victorian Britain"; Jason Long; 2006
- "Encyclopedia of Chicago": "Great Migration"; James Grossman; 2005
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