Immigration & Urbanization
• Migration:
– More on positive/negative consequence
– Trends in internal migration
• Urbanization
– Urban Transition
• Proximate determinants
– Theories
– Impacts
Negative Consequences
• stress and disorganization of daily life
• loss of old relationships; extended kin ties
weakened
• financial insecurity
• creates inner-city slums
– housing shortage in host area
• insecurity
Positive Consequences of
Immigration
• cheap labor force for the receiving country (still
a better living for migrants)
• remittances back to lesser developed areas
– Boost sending country economy
– $71 billion in official (reported to the IMF)
remittances in 1990; compare with $51 billion in
official development assistance in 1988)
– remittances have the volume of 30-50% of imports
in some countries
• migrants in LDCs are more likely to educate
their children as well as to seek modern health
care
Ambiguous Consequences
• effects composition of community
– increased diversity but often increased discrimination
• development of enclaves
– good for migrant security and mental health during
transition, also access to working capital and
protected labor markets; can also be a low-wage and
low-opportunity ghetto
• donor areas have lower fertility because young
adults migrate
– this can be good or bad, plus they lose the labor
productivity of those people
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More Ambiguous Consequences
• filling jobs natives don’t want
• there is some controversy regarding
whether remittances improve sending
country economies or instead just fuel
inflation
• brain drain vs. brain overflow
Internal Migration
• In MDCs
– To suburbs
• In U.S.
– South westward
• Gravity Model of Migration:
– does migration deprive developing economies
of their brightest citizens?
– does migration reduce educated
unemployment
Urbanization
• Urbanization - redistribution from the countryside
to the city
• Therefore, urbanization is measured as the
percent of the population residing in an urban
area
• Urbanization≠urban growth
But how do we define “urban”?
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Proximate Determinants of
Urbanization:
Urban is defined by:
1) population size
2) space
3) ratio of population to space - density
4) economic and social organization
censuses and surveys usually employ some
threshold population size (but with the ambiguity
that the size of the space is not defined)
Theories of Urbanization
• Modernization theory – ties urbanization to
demographic transition.
• World-Systems theory – ties urbanization
to position in world system.
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internal rural to urban migration
international urban migration
reclassification
natural increase (indirectly)
If: NI (rural) > NI (urban) then,
rural areas release population pressure via migration to urban areas
Impacts of Urbanization in
MDCs
Positive
• higher wages
• economies of scale
• More social mobility
Negative
• crowding (applies to
suburbs as well as
central cities now)
• More violent crime
• pollution (suburbanization
doesn’t help)
• concentration of the poor
in central cities (also the
non-white; gentrification
hasn’t changed this)
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Additional Impacts of
Urbanization in LDCs
Positive
• Lower fertility
• Lower mortality
• More opportunities for
political participation
Negative
• More sexually
transmitted disease
• Expansion of amenities
(water, education,
sanitation) failing to
keep pace with urban
growth
• Relative
disenfranchisement of
rural residents
Why doesn’t urbanization stop
when urban advantages
diminish due to overcrowding
and insufficient expansion of
services?
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