Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
to support community facilities. This has the effect
of reducing the attractiveness of life in the
countryside at the same time as the growing cities
are providing an increasing range of amenities,
including higher-order consumer goods, with the
result that the pull of the city becomes that much
greater and the incentive for further rural-urban
migration stronger.
The impact of migration on the rural source
areas is made more acute because of the selective
nature of the process. This has several facets. Out-
migrants are usually young adults for whom the
countryside holds few job opportunities and is
unable to compete with the 'city lights', with the
result that the next generation of children is lost
to the city and the rural population becomes
progressively older. The rural exodus also tends to
be skewed more heavily towards women than
men, because rural production is primarily the
domain of male labour, whereas women can gain
access to a much wider range of jobs in cities, not
only in domestic and other services, but also in
some branches of manufacturing like textiles. This
gender selectivity reduces the 'marriage market'
for the men that stay behind in the countryside,
with the result that fewer of these have families or
else eventually succumb to the temptations of the
city. Third, while rural outmigration can be bipolar
in social terms and involve the landless and
destitute as well as the more gifted and
enterprising, it is normally the latter that dominate
the outflows, whether moving to get further
education or seeking work. This will tend to
enhance the human capital of the city at the
expense of the countryside—a process that will
be reinforced by the return to their original
community of migrants who have failed to
achieve what they expected in the city.
Turning to the impacts on the reception areas,
it can be deduced from what has just been said
that urban areas are clear beneficiaries of the
process, in that they gain from the arrival of young,
enterprising and adaptable workers and from the
'multiplier effects' of their consumer demands and
in due course of their biological reproduction. On
the other hand, there are some important
'downside' effects, notably on existing urban
residents and on the overall functional efficiency
of the city. Put bluntly, the arrival of new residents
in the short-term increases the competition for
work and for the scarce resources of space,
housing, food and other everyday needs, while in
the longer term the city grows larger, developing
at higher densities and expanding in area. The
newcomers do not incur the full costs of their
migration decisions, since the additional
congestion is felt by all and the provision of the
extra infrastructure (roads, drainage, schools and
so on) is largely financed from taxes and charges
levied on the whole community.
Further diseconomies arise in situations where
the newcomers are significantly different in their
characteristics from the longer-established urban
population. In fact, it is usually the case that
migrants from rural areas will arrive with few
resources, given that they come from essentially
poorer areas and that any family wealth will be
invested in the land, let alone the fact that most
will be at the start of their working lives. As a result,
initially they can afford only the cheapest housing,
which leads to the emergence of 'slum housing'
areas either through the recycling of older housing
or through the construction of 'shanty towns'.
This social polarisation is reinforced if the
newcomers are also distinctive in their cultural
attributes, not merely being associated with a rural
lifestyle but being drawn from different racial
stock or indeed from different national origins.
The 'ghettos' of cities in the USA resulted from
the influx of black Americans from the rural South
as well as from the immigration of the rural poor
from southern and eastern Europe and more
recently from Latin America and Pacific Asia.
Perhaps the most extreme examples of poor living
conditions in the city are those associated with
people intending fairly temporary residence there,
such as those engaged in some form of seasonal
movement or 'circular migration' and those
whose aim is to remain in the city only long
enough to acquire enough capital to set up in
business back home.
The two case studies illustrate well the nature,
and indeed the complexity, of the urbanisation
process and its impacts, as well as indicating some of
