When a person or a household migrates, there will be impacts occurring at both the origin and their destination. The impacts can be categorised as social, economic, environmental and political. In China, migrant workers make up one tenth of the country’s population experiences rural to urban migration constantly, for example migrant workers from the countryside migrating to the big urban cities.
China’s migrant workers have left their rural farmland and migrate to the big cities in hope to have better job opportunity; the movement is called a rural to urban migration. This creates a number of social effects in the rural area such as children being left alone with less parental guidance and support and most of the migrant workers are male with a decrease in the male population there will be less which will affect the safety of children, whereas in the city migrant workers can help to increase the diversity of people in the city.
With the presence of migrant workers in the urban cities the country has received lots of economic impacts such as the migrants working as construction and factory workers, and this has caused cheap labour. As the amount of migrants increases so does the cheap labour and so more production will results in a stable economy. But with the great success in the urban destination, the rural areas receive negative economic impacts such as a shortage of economically active people (16-65) to help support the community.
The movement of workers form the countryside to the urban cities has caused a lot of negative political impacts in both the rural and urban area. In rural areas the migration will cause a lack in funding for farming as the number of farmers has decreased, when the people arrive in the urban area and most are able to obtain a job as construction or factory workers which mostly are temporary jobs, an example would be a construction worker builds the Beijing Olympic Stadium for a period of 3 years providing jobs for many people but after the completion of the building a large amount of people will unemployed. The temporary jobs that these migrant workers do, as seen from the example above will cause a large amount of workers to be unemployed and thus form a floating population, which is the population of people that has been cast out of urban jobs in factories and construction sites, this has caused political and social unrest towards the government.
The migration has also affected the environment, in rural areas the increase in production will create more pollution, whereas in the urban area as more people are migrating to cities and obtaining jobs in areas of labour this will contribute in the economy which will have a negative impact to the environment as with a growing economy more natural resources will be required to be used for construction and with a large amount of migrant workers in the cities this will increase traffic congestion which results in noise pollution.
Even though there are many negative impacts of rural to urban migration, there are also positive impacts as well. Social impacts such as less overcrowding in the origin and a more diverse culture in the destination. The migration can also lead to other positive impacts such as better economy in the country, as migrant workers end back remittances back home and this can greatly affect the economy of their household and their household can improve on a store and so on, this action is called the multiplier effect. In rural areas the people may also contribute to positive things as the families of the migrant workers receive remittances they can help themselves and their community, multiplier effect.
An example of urban to rural migration or counter urbanisation would also be in the UK, the migration from London to St. Ives. In St. Ives it is much more accessible to the Cambridge science parks and other services, people from London would travel to St. Ives to for work at a daily basis, as more people from London travel to St. Ives there will be much less people which will cause the urban community to decrease and this will result in unemployment which leads to social and political unrest, less overcrowding in the city and cleaner streets due to less people and there would also be less traffic therefore less accidents. But the migration has put a strain on the economy in London as there will be a depleting number of skilled workers and with a smaller urban market this will lead to less money for producers. With most of the people from London migrating to St. Ives the population size has decreased which has made the government manage the population to be much easier, and also with less people around the amount of garbage and pollution decrease.
The people travel from London to St. Ives by using commuters and a motorway (A14) located near St. Ives, as more people are travelling the commuters from both London and St. Ives will cause pollution and congestion in the motorway. As there are less people in London the tax revenue made by the government will decrease which causes less funds for local councils.
In St. Ives as there are more people working there the money can be used to conserve the environment, building infrastructure, services such as shopping malls. With more people there will be an increase in the amount of labour available which results to a much more diverse community and more people working in varying professions.
By looking at the examples above we can conclude that there are more negative impacts in the origin than the destination in an internal migration, as we can see from the example or urbanisation in China and counter urbanisation in the UK. There are more negative impacts in the origin in an internal migration such as congestion of motorways and floating population.
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Bibliography
- Geography for the IB Diploma – Patterns and Change, Paul Guinness, 2011
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122816637753369999.html
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120767846634098627.html
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8244599.stm
