Urbanization , Rural – urban Migration and Urban Poverty

Acknowledgements With thanks to Yang Shen and Julia Wesely for their contributions. This paper was produced as a Background Paper for World Migration Report 2015 Migrants and Cities: New Urban Partnerships to Manage Mobility and is published as an IIED working paper here with permission. The Human Settlements Group works to reduce poverty and improve health and housing conditions in the urban centres of Africa, Asia and Latin America. It seeks to combine this with promoting good governance and more ecologically sustainable patterns of urban development and rural-urban linkages. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is an intergovernmental organisation committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits both migrants and society. As the leading global organisation for migration, IOM works with migrants, governments and its partners in the international community to provide humane responses to the growing migration challenges of today. 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.