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Social Consequences of Migration

The social effects of internal migration particularly rural to urban on both the source rural and destination urban need to be seen.

There are conflicting views where one view is that migration adversely affects the welfare of the source areas because of increasing rural to urban migration in spite of rising urban unemployment, increasing environmental problems, overgrowing of population and the shortage of urban amenities.

Although the available urban opportunities and the rising wage levels in urban areas continue to be main source of attraction for the migrants the urban problems and the problem of shortage of labor in rural areas are aggravated more by the accelerating rural to urban migration.

It is due to this migration is viewed as adversely affecting the welfare of both the rural as well as the urban areas.

The other view is that migration directly or indirectly takes care of the welfare of rural areas and positively affects urbanization, cultural transformation and development.

The social consequences of rural to urban migration for the rural source areas may be examined in terms of the following points

The effects of migration on the individual migrants themselves who come from varied socio-economic backgrounds the effects on the resource base of the families of the migrants left behind the effects of the migration on the village community of the migrants.

Secondly the social consequences of rural to urban migration for the urban destination areas may be examined in terms of the effects on the degree of exposure of migrants to the city, the effects on the patterns of resocialization of migrants into the urban way of life, their acculturation and cultural transformation, the effects of rural to urban migration on the location and adjustment of migrants into the urban social setting and the effects on the nature of interaction between the migrants, the overcrowding of migrants and its impact on urban employment.

Migration is a function of certain objective social conditions operating at the rural source and at the urban destination. Those conditions are generally referred to as rural push and urban pull factors of migration. The interplay of these push –pull factor plays an important role in determining the flow of out or in migration.

Migration is both a separative and additive process. It separates people from the place of origin and adds them to the place of destination. These functions of migration have important social consequences. The immediate effect of migration is the separation of individual migrants from the origin areas.