Rural–urban migration continues to attract much interest, but also growing concern. Migrants are often blamed for increasing urban poverty, but not all migrants are poor. In many cities, however, migrants form a large proportion of the urban poor with whom they share income and non-income disadvantages, including difficulties in finding adequate housing and in accessing services. Like the majority of the urban poor, they work long hours in low-paid, insecure and unsafe jobs and are exposed to a wide range of environmental hazards because most low-income and informal settlements lack basic infrastructure. In many cases when urban governments try to reduce or control rural–urban migration, this also affects low-income residents and not just migrants.

Available at http://pubs.iied.org/10725IIED.html?c=urban [1]

Further reading:

Brown, Donald, Gordon McGranahan and David Dodman (2014), “Urban informality and building a more inclusive, resilient and green economy”, IIED working paper, available at http://pubs.iied.org/10722IIED.html [2].  

McGranahan, Gordon and George Martine (editors) (2014), Urban Growth in Emerging Economies: Lessons from the BRICS, Routledge.  

McGranahan, Gordon and David Satterthwaite (2014), “Urbanisation concepts and trends”, IIED working paper, available at http://pubs.iied.org/10709IIED.html [3].