In any topic one discusses it is always very important to understand the key words of the topic to enable him or her to tackle the topic effectively. In our context, the key words are human migration, development policy and planning. To start with migration is to move from one place to another that means human migration means people that move from one place to another. Migration includes both immigration from a foreign nation and movement within national boundaries. Development is the increase in productivity. It could be productivity of services.
Migration can be voluntary this means rational change or involuntary migration is a forced type for example refugees camps. Other types of migration are internal and international migrations. Policy is a plan or procedure that should be followed when implementation is being done to achieve a common goal. A plan is a strategy worked out in advance of an action or work out the means for doing something. Now understand human migration pattern is hence very important, because it can lead to country’s harm or good.
This is because these patterns cause advantages or disadvantages to different areas at different times and in different ways. Economic development is a very vital step in most countries and most especially its mostly happens in urban areas. It can be brought about when people migrate to for instance urban area and are accommodated in the work force hence ensuring a big working body which eventually comes out with a huge output to cater for most of them including the dependent groups like children below 15 years and old age group of above 65 years.
Hence to cater for such a population in the urban areas, economic development must be encouraged. Economy only becomes disastrous in these urban areas when it is unable to cater for the huge population that has migrated in it. A good example is when such migrant go in these urban areas to settle yet there are no jobs (unemployment or underemployment). It is clearly seen that such are the towns with high rates of crime, overpopulation because people come up with shanties because that is what they can afford; rise in prices of goods and services because of the scarcity yet their demand is very high.
The implication here now is that when the government understands the migration pattern in the urban areas, it can either control the entry in these cities by implementing policies like starting up projects for everyone to be involved in hence earn a wage of salary for a comfortable life. Urban growth in developing countries for instance Uganda is really at an alarming rate. The towns are overpopulated yet the rural areas remain empty. This really has not only implications to development planning but also to the environment.
The lesser the population in any area the better because the atmosphere remains uncontaminated, resources like food remains available hence cheap; there’s is decent housing etc. I am not saying that all these factors cannot be found in urban areas, infact they are the issues considered or looked at when one want to weigh the growth of a town presently compared to the past. But everything has a capacity compared to that it can hold and that if that capacity exceeds, a waster is then seen.
For example even an organization has a maximum and minimum number of workers that has a maximum and minimum number of workers that it can employ and that if it exceeds then can lead to the downfall of that organization or destruction of property within the organization. This is because anyone will hold anything and hence there will be lack of accountability. Today there are different trends of migration and each trend has its caution regarding existing forecast. These trends include four major ways and these are; the majority of migrants from rural to urban areas are men who migrate just then followed by women and then children.
The young people also migrate so much than the old counterparts. Here it should be noted that the infants/children and the elderly are left behind in their origin area. The educated have also got a big likelihood of migrating than the uneducated. And lastly the economically rich or those who accumulate considerable amounts of money in rural areas will always be tempted to migrate to urban areas so as to get opportunities to get more money. The forces that impel residences of rural areas to migrate to urban areas are push and pull factors. Push factors include insecurity, traditions customs e.
g. female circumcisions, land disputes, child labor and natural calamities. Pull factors are better social services, employment opportunities stability etc. Understanding migration for development policy and planning also relates to the gender division of labor. Here Agricultural work is mainly left in the hand of women, elderly and children While the men, young people, economically stable and educated rush mostly for other jobs of white collar jobs. This scenario is not accompanied by an equivalent transfer of decision making power about firm affairs to the above same group.
Migration here also reduces the amount of labor mainly because able bodied individuals have moved to either urban area. Women take roles that were either to reserve to males. The demographic change and its implication to developing country also emerged when it comes to human migration for development policy and planning. But first it’s important to understand what demographic means. Demography is the scientific study of human population with respect to their size, structure development change. It is mainly descriptive in nature.
Demography can include dependency ratio where informal sector is large than the formal sector, women as a group – 80% of the Agriculture population is done by the women yet Agriculture is the main GDP of the country for Uganda, lack of data, unemployment, fertility. In summary, human unemployment migration can either be positive or negative. The positive aspect is that there would be increase in the work force hence increment of output. Negatively, it can cause poverty, imbalance of resource allocation, division of labour environment impact.So in conclusion, it is always very important to understand human migration for development policy and planning.
REFERENCES
Beauchemin, Cris and Philippe Bocquier, 2004, “Migration and urbanization in Francophone WestAfrica: An overview of the recent empirical evidence”, Urban Studies, Cohen, Barney, 2004, “Urban growth in developing countries: A review of current trends and a caution regarding existing forecasts”, World Development, Davies, Adam, 2005, “Migration, development and poverty. Towards and new framework of impact assessment”, unpublished dissertation, MSc Development Administration and Planning,
Development Planning Unit, UCL, London. Fan, C. Cindy, 2003, “Rural-urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Harris, John R. and Michael P. Todaro, 1970, “Migration, unemployment and development: A two sector analysis”, The American Economic Review. Harris, Nigel and Ida Fabricius (eds. ), 1996, Cities and Structural Adjustment, UCL Press, London. Newman, Peter, 2006, “The environmental impact of cities”, Environment and Urbanization. Rehen, David S. , 2004, “The demographic transition revisited as a global process”, Population, Space and Place.