Internal migration in developing countries: a review of theory, evidence, methodology and research priorities
- Geneva International Labour Office 1976
- 106p.
Until quite recently, rapid internal migration was generally looked upon as a desirable process in which surplus rural labour was gradually withdrawn from traditional agriculture in order to provide cheap manpower to fuel a growing modern industrial complex. Nowadays economists no, longer consider rapid internal migration in this way; on the contrary, migration today is increasingly taken to be the major contributing factor to the ubiqui tous phenomenon, of urban surplus labpur, and a force which continues to exacerbate the already serious urban unemployment problems caused by growing economic and structural imbalances between urban and rural areas. The impact of the migration process on economic development is even more significant in its implications for economic growth in general: for migration substantially in excess of new job opportunities is both a symptom of and a contributing factor to underdevelopment in the Third World.
In this study Michael P. Todaro points to the need to recognise the central importance of internal migration and to integrate the two-way relationship between migration and population distribution, on the one hand, and economic variables, on the other, into a more comprehensive analytical framework designed to improve development policy, and to understand both the causes and consequences of internal migration for rural and urban economic and social development. To this end he examines the literature on migration models and the role of internal migration; identifies what has been empirically tested and where; explores the strengths and limitations of various methodological approaches to estimating the parameters of micro and macro econometric functions, and suggests the most promising avenues for further investigation; and, building on these foundations, identifies the major priority questions in migration research which still remain to be answered, and suggests appropriate methodological ap proaches for dealing with them.