Systems Approach to a Theory of Rural‐Urban Migration

Abstract

Systems Approach to a Theory of Rural-Urban MigrationIn the growing literature on the study of migration, two theoretical issues have attracted the greatest attention, namely, why people migrate and how far they move.A simple model for explaining the reasons why people move has been formulated in terms of the "pullpush" hypothesis [Id, 191.This has been elaborated variously to take account of internal migration movements of the rural-rural, ruralurban, or urban-urban types and international migrations.The issue of how far people move has, in turn, given rise to the formulation of a surprisingly large number of models of varying degrees of statistical or mathematical sophistication.In most of these models the distance covered is treated as either the sole independent variable or as one of many independent variables explaining the number of migrants moving to particular destinations.Morrill [ d l ] has provided a valuable summary of these models and suggests that they can be classified broadly into deterministic and probabilistic models.Most of these theoretical formulations have been applied to conditions in the developed countries of the world and especially to urbanto-urban migrations.Their relevance for handling migratory movements from rural to urban areas and particularly in the circumstances of underdeveloped countries has hardly been considered.Yet, it is these areas of the world where rural-urban migrations are presently taking place that afford the best opportunity for testing theoretical notions about this class of movements.It is suggested that Africa, in particular, is a unique area from which to draw important empirical evidence about this type of movements.Similarly valuable data, however, can also be derived from examining the history of some of the advanced countries of the world.It is, of course, true that in Africa attention to date has been focussed to a disproportionate extent on seasonal and other non-permanent transfers of population from rural to urban areas, that is, on what has been referred to as a "constant circulatory movement" between the two