What Do You Think About the Pros and Cons of Rural-Urban Migration?

Full Name: Tran Thi Ha Phuong

Student ID: 65935

Class: IBL0601

MID-TERM EXAMINATION

Topic: What do you think about the pros and cons of rural-urban migration?

Rural-urban migration occurs at varying rates in every nation, most prevalent in the developing countries. It is the movement of people from rural areas to urban centers in search of employment and better living condition among others. Rural-urban migration continues to attract much interest, but also growing concern about its benefits and drawbacks. The main focus of this assignment is on the pros and cons of rural-urban migration in developing countries. For many years, rural-urban migration played a larger causative role in economic modernization and also was a critical component of urbanization. Moreover, the contribution of rural-urban migration to a better social integration is the most accepted and uncontroversial. On the other hand, the number of the migrants has led to excessive urbanization and become a major contributing factor to the increase of poverty, crimes, and slums in urban areas. Nevertheless, there is much concern about a great deal of environmental pollution caused by the migration.

Firstly, the scale of migration leads to urbanization with plenty of opportunities for people from all sections of society to achieve their goals. Many factories are built in urban areas since economic benefit was the sole purpose of the urbanization from the beginning, which will benefit to local economy, which goes to the wealth of government. Economies of scale also arise as a result of urbanization. When suppliers and consumers are closer to each other, this allows for savings in both communications and transportation costs. Most importantly, urbanization makes economy of scale applicable in the development of infrastructure hence rapid modernization. It provides well-developed schools and universities to millions of people. The overall living standard, literacy rate and skills of the labor rises considerably because of urbanization. For example, literacy rate of India was 84.97% while urban literacy rate was 74.04%. Large cities also offer a variety of employment opportunities with higher wages, all of which may help accelerate the pace of technological innovation. Furthermore, urban growth also allows governments to supply services such as water supply, electricity, health care facilities and transportation more efficiently. For instance, in India, there are well-developed health care facilities available in urban sector because of the government’s various health care policies such as: National Filarial Control programme, Urban Malaria scheme, …. Secondly, rural-urban migration brings the better social integration. Unlike rural areas where people have known each other in a cohesive community since they were born, Putnam (2009) stated that urban centers are home of different people from every social class and cultural who live and work together, which creates the changes for newcomers to introduce their cultural diversity and break down social barriers. As a result, people can build their long-term relationships and expand individual’s social network in a dynamic system. Clearly, a socially integrated society would also be more resilient in the face of adversity, as observed by Brañas-Garza etc (2010)