Internal migration and urbanization Flashcards
Zelinsky (1971)
Produced the migration transition model: a combination of modernisation theory and the demographic transition model.
1) Pre-modern • Traditional society • Most people are sedentary • Stable and inward look • Migration is minimal and circular • Land use or pilgrimage
2) Early Transitional
• This involves mass migration from rural to urban
• To other colonial frontiers
• Modest increase in circulation
3) Late Transitional
• Continued rural-urban migration (decreasing)
• Increased circulation among elites and highly skilled
• Migration becomes more complex
4) Advanced
• Primary mode of migration is urban to urban
• Immigration of low skilled workers filling niches
• High levels of circulation among elites/highly skilled
5) Super-Advanced
• Lower levels of all forms of migration
• Technology is to blame for this
Strict political control over mobility
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen suggests that “development is, in part, the freedom and capability to live the life that one values”
This way of thinking forces us to rethink our ideas about development and migration. For example, urbanisation can occur without industrialisation in different areas of the world. Just because this process occurred in the Western World, this does not mean that there is a trajectory of development.
The practice of urbanisation must be rethought. There are different factors that produce urbanization. The majority of growth in urban population is linked with natural growth- it is not necessarily a migration
When we imagine urbanization in the global south, we imagine the rural-urban migrant. This is not necessarily the case.
Chan (2010)
The Hukou (household registration) system in China has segregated the rural and urban populations in social, economic and political terms. It is the foundation of China’s divisive dualistic socio-economic structure. 700-800 million people are in effect treated as 2nd class citizens- deprived of the opportunity to settle legally in cities and access basic welfare and state services.
The Hukou system is essentially a system of social control aimed at excluding the rural population from access to state-provided goods, welfare and entitlements.
For nearly two decades, rural populations were banned from urban areas. BUT, as demands for labour in the heavily industrializing urban centres, rural populations began to be introduced as ‘temporary workers’. However, their Hukou was not changed, so these people still did not have access to welfare.
By the 1980s, this process has expanded to a mass movement of people (rural-Hukou labour became the backbone of the export industry). BUT, they still were not eligible for access to urban welfare benefits OR treated as a full citizen within society.
This process has created a large, easily exploitable, highly mobile and flexible industrial workforce for China’s export economy
Not surprisingly, the Hukou system has attracted much criticism within and outside of China. There have been two attempts at reform: the first the devolution of administrative powers to lower levels of government and the second as an attempt to make the Hukou system more ‘humane’ (offering urban Hukou to the children of migrants)
BUT, these adjustments have done little to tackle the core dualistic nature of the system.
Gaetano (2016) C2
Macro-level political-economic explanations of migration obscure the experience of migrants and the complexities of the migration process; compromising knowledge and misinforming policy.
Moreover, in neoclassical and structural analyses, households are assumed to strategize for the optimum balance of resources among family members. BUT, feminist attention to the roles of women in migration has led to criticism of this approach as it fails to account for intra-household dynamics and the competing opinions of household members. For example, Chinese daughters tend to migrate despite original opposition from family members.
The author suggests that migration emerges from young rural women’s desires for the new and modern, the chance to make something of themselves, and their sense of responsibility to family and household. Such yearnings reflect their internalization of a discourse of modernization and social development that construes rural space and occupants as impediments to progress. These yearnings also reflected the values associated with their social position in the patriarchal family and household, even as these were transformed by market socialism.
EXAMPLE: in contemporary China, rural youth are discursively inscribed in a moral geography and teleology of modernity such that leaving the countryside is mandatory. The migration of young rural women conveniently meets the needs of the state for a youthful, relatively cheap, and flexible labor force for the accumulation of capital.
Yet migration cannot be accurately explained as solely an involuntary response to the demands of the developmental state. Participation in migration has become an essential rite of passage for individuals to cultivate their talents and exercise their prerogatives, and for youth to become adults.
Gaetano (2016) C3
This chapter focuses on the function and significance of social networks that facilitate migration by providing material and social support to new migrants, as well as guarding the moral reputations of unmarried women.
Young migrant women are both pawns and players in social networks. On one hand, the social network extends the reach of rural patriarchal power to the city and curtails women’s autonomy. On the other hand, migrant women gain interpersonal skills, social status and capital which can parlay into better work opportunities and social mobility.
Social networks forged with the principle of reciprocity are integral to the migration process. It is also personally and culturally meaningful to them as it connects young migrant women to their families and communities and expresses their filial devotion.
However, social networks and guanxi building are integral to the reproduction of gender roles and identities. Namely the filial daughter, and thus may reinforce rural patriarchal ideology and power, such as by remotely controlling young women’s sexuality. This contributes to the homogenization of women’s migration experiences.
In particular, they channel rural women into gender-specific job niches with limited opportunities for occupational mobility, where their cheap and expendable labor accumulates capital for the developmental state.
King and Skeldon (2010)
The distinctions between internal/international migration is becoming increasingly blurred. Migrants’ journeys are becoming increasingly multiple, complex and fragmented.
Zelinsky [model] argues that there are definite patterned regularities in the growth of personal mobility and these compromise and essential component of the modernisation process. BUT the weaknesses include: the assumption of an immobile pre-modern society, the implied parallel between mobility transition and demographic transition, rooting mobility in modernisation theory.
The relationship between migration and development has become known as the migration-development nexus. International migration is now widely viewed as having the potential to contribute to development and poverty alleviation.
But there is an overlook on the impact that internal migration has (the author argues that this is quantitatively more important). Part of this is the tendency of governments in poorer countries to view internal migration negatively.
China is one of the few governments to recognise the positive relationship between development and internal migration: reducing pressure on rural land and providing labour for manufacturing and services.
Zhang (2001)
A transition from a centrally planned economy to a mixed market-based economy is dramatically transforming Chinese society. Over 100 million rural transients (known in China as the ‘floating population’) have left their rural villages and moved to the city for jobs. The presence of this large mobile population has initiated a very different relationship between the state’s control and local communities.
Despite the fact that rural migrants fill gaps in labour in urban centres, they are often considered to be draining the already scarce public resources and are often blamed for increased crime and social instability. They appear to be out of place in the urban; but they DO challenge the state’s control that is based on the assumption of a relatively stable population that is fixed in space.
Example: Zhejiang Village
The largest and most well-established migrant settlement in Beijing. In 1995, the government mobilised a campaign to clean up the village. The ultimate goal was to eliminate what was perceived as a spatialized form of social power outside of the state’s control. 40,000 migrants lost their homes and were forced out of the settlement. BUT, three months after this political hurricane had dwindled, the majority of displaced migrants began to return to what had been Zhejiangcun to rebuild their community and businesses. The migrants re-built their home in two ways: by disguising the building as a legitimate state business or to turn the space into migrant residences (e.g. factories).
Managing the floating population and migrant enclaves has long been regarded by certain government officials as the most difficult task facing the post-Mao political regime.
The tension between the floating population and the state is partly derived from the state’s refusal to grant a legitimate status to the mediating social stratum between migrant masses and the state.
Sopranzetti (2017)
Imaginaries of ‘not yet’ development fuel distinctions between rural and urban areas of Thailand: not yet modern, not yet capitalistic, not yet democratic or not yet educated. In between are the people who reproduce these narratives on an everyday basis. BUT, they also move between these two places, bringing them closer together.
These unresolved tensions reproduce an exploitative relation between Bangkok and the Thai countryside- pushing people to reorient personal, economic and political aspirations towards the city, but also limiting their full realization.
This makes migrants fully aware and concerned about the fragility of their lives and the material effects of these unresolved tensions on their families and villages.
