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Urban Growth and Migration

Urban growth is another important pull factor of migration because it exerts its influence on the people from outside the village community. It is very closely related with migration. It stimulates migration in the same way in which migration stimulates urban growth. They have reinforcing and stimulating effects on each other. The urbanization-stimulating effect of migration can be seen in migration as a major source of urbanization.

The process of migration accelerates urban growth by way of shifting the rural potential in the form of educated manpower, productive labour force and socio cultural heritage. Thus the migration to urban areas becomes a process of urban growth, urbanization, social transformation and social integration.

In certain areas the population is not very mobile due to certain socio-cultural traditions. But the changes that are taking place are breaking those traditions and giving rise to an upswing in migration towards urban areas. This is a recent phenomenon due to which villagers from almost every village are now living in urban areas. They encourage and provide contacts to those who are increasingly oriented towards the new urbanized and expanding economy and getting ready to achieve that orientation. This forms a chain of migration that is potential input support to urbanization.

The urban areas consist of better health, social, recreational, environmental, residential and media facilities in addition to other urban amenities and the overall glittering city life. All such urban opportunities are referred to as factors of attractiveness that vary by the degree of urban growth, urbanization and development. They pull the people who overcome the problem of distance and costs of moving towards the centres of greater concentration of those opportunities. They realize that those centres have powers of gratification and absorption.

Ravenstein says that most long distance migrants usually prefer to go by choice to the rapidly growing centers of such opportunities. Since the migrants are not uniformly distributed between and within the urban centres because of their social background factors they are employed on a mass scale in various sectors with manufacturing and services being the two major migration employing branches of all urban employment. They are drawn and appropriately placed in the work –hierarchy on the basis of their social class characteristics. The class based division of work and status at the place of urban employment prevails in almost every city.