Ethnicity and Urbanizaiton

This work is an attempt to trace the role of ethnicity in the adjustment of regional migrants and their integration into the complex urban setting of Poona. I was prompted to study the social aspects of migration and urbanization as there exists no comprehensive theoretical and empirical work on this subject in India. Language, region, religion and caste are generally ientified as factors contributing to ethnicity in India. An empirical investigation of the persistence of ethnicity and its contribution to the integration of immigrants from various linguistic regions in India into a pluralistic urban society may by implication throw some light on the pattern of integration in the pluralistic Indian society.

A few words about the scheme of the book will not be out of order. Chapter 1 presents the central problem of the project and formulates its theoretical framework regarding the interrelation between migration and urbanization, model of simulation and the concepts of ethnicity, pluralism and inte gration.

Chapter 2 deals with the research strategy adopted in the present study and explains the methodology of selection, collection, and interpretation of data, procedure of sampling and construction of indices.

Chapter 3 is divided into two sections-section one provides a historical account of the migration and settlement of the south Indian immigrants in the city of Poona. These data demonstrate that the process of migration and urbanization had begun in the case of the city of Poona much before the onset of industrialization.