Migrating from the big cities for opportunities in smaller towns: The case of Brazil

by Eva Maria Egger 

While most of the literature on internal migration focuses on rapid urbanization and metropolitan cities as destinations filled with opportunities for migrants, little attention has been paid to those people who leave the big cities. Not only do migrants return to their places of origin in rural areas, but  many people decide to leave their place of birth in the metropolitan area to find opportunities in smaller towns. Recently, Christiaensen et al. (2013) have pointed out the importance of smaller towns for the economic development of African countries in contrast to the traditional standard two-sector development model. And considering all the discussions about the issues around urbanization, such as high unemployment, poor housing infrastructure, high crime etc., it should not be surprising that some people also consider leaving these difficult environments.

However, from an economic perspective, one of the main drivers for internal migration is the seeking of higher wages. As wages are on average much higher in metropolitan areas, leaving these areas comes at the cost of a wage loss. Despite this, Brazil’s 2010 census, the most recent demographic data, shows that net-migration into metropolitan cities[1] is negative for working-age male migrants. Between 2009 and 2010, 20% of all working age male migrants within Brazil moved out of metropolitan micro-regions to non-metropolitan micro-regions with on average less than 500,000 inhabitants. During the same period, only around 15% moved in the opposite direction. These urban out-migrants actually change jobs and are not just reflecting suburbanisation by commuters. Also, the migrants are a diverse group: a third of them have attained only primary education, while around 18% are college graduates.

Therefore, in my research I aim to use econometric methods to estimate which factors make  smaller towns more attractive compared to metropolitan cities, if not wages. My findings suggest, that one of the main economic drivers is the much lower living costs in smaller towns, such that migrants on average do not experience a wage loss in real terms. They prefer towns with growing economic opportunities rather than very small and remote areas. In terms of non-economic factors, the migrants appear to value the quality of provision of education. These findings indicate that the investments of the Brazilian government during the recent years into infrastructure development of smaller towns and former less developed and more remote regions is bearing fruit. As more and more Brazilians are attracted to these locations they contribute to a reduction in regional inequality. Thus it could be worth widening the focus of our migration research to include these destinations outside of metropolitan agglomerations and for policy makers, too, to acknowledge the potential of smaller towns.

Reference:

Christiaensen, L., J. De Weerdt and Y. Todo (2013), Urbanization and poverty reduction: the role of rural diversification and secondary towns, Agricultural Economics, 44, 435-447.

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

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[1] Metropolitan areas are microregions with one million or more inhabitants. This definition follows the United Nations’ World Urbanization Prospects (UNWUP, http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/) (Christaensen et al. 2013). 

Capturing the potential of migration for women’s empowerment and poverty reduction

by Rosemary Vargas-Lundius, David Suttie and Anja Lund

 

Increased flows of information and the falling cost of transportation make migration increasingly viable for rural women and men today. Most of the rural people who decide to migrate arrive in larger towns and cities within their own country. In fact, the majority of global migration occurs within countries, with conservative estimates placing the number of internal migrants globally at 740 million, compared to 200 million international migrants.

One of the most significant changes in migration is that today more women are migrating than ever before. Women now constitute half the international migrant population, and trends seem to be similar for internal migration too, though data is scarce. In many countries the majority of migrants are now women. For example, in Sri Lanka and in the Philippines, female migrants are about 74 percent and 55 percent of total outflows respectively.

These trends are creating important opportunities for poverty reduction and women’s empowerment. The poverty reducing benefits of migration broadly are well documented. So too is the role that migration and remittances play in improving food security and alleviating poverty among poor rural households.

The benefits of migration apply also to migrants’ destination communities. In Brazil higher rates of internal migration are associated with reductions in poverty in destination cities (among both the local population and migrants) and increased access to infrastructure services. Far from placing additional pressure on urban labour markets as is sometimes feared, local households have been shown to benefit from complementarities of locals and migrants in productive tasks.

Migration offers opportunities for the empowerment of women in terms of access to paid employment outside the family, access to services and relaxation of the rigid gender norms which prevail throughout many rural societies. In cases where the migrating family member has been male, this has often enabled women to take on greater decision-making and management responsibilities on family farms, with remittances sometimes allowing them to hire labour to reduce their own workloads.

But what about the challenges? Migrating women are likely to continue experiencing forms of gender discrimination and are not always well placed to benefit from the prosperity of their destination towns and cities. According to UN-HABITAT, “gender gaps in labour and employment, decent work, pay, tenure rights, access to and accumulation of assets, personal security and safety, and representation in formal structures of urban governance, show that women are often the last to benefit from the prosperity of cities.”

Women and girls are the most affected by many governments’ struggles to maintain services and infrastructure. Expensive public transport systems hinder women’s mobility, and many are forced to live in poor housing in the face of escalating living costs. Migrant women living in poor urban neighbourhoods often have to compensate for a lack of services and infrastructure by working longer hours, caring for children who are frequently ill as a result of inadequate water and sanitation. Urban crime can also be a serious problem for migrant women. In addition, social relations can be more fragmented and despite urban areas having better equipped health clinics and more doctors, residence related access and the expense of such healthcare often puts it out of the reach of migrant women.

So, how can policy-makers support migrating women in light of these realities? Broadly, more attention is needed on promoting mobility. This should include removing disincentives such as residency based social protection (as is often the case with health and education schemes) and urban housing policies that are biased against migrants. But equally important will be addressing the gender dimensions of migration.

Introducing gender sensitive labour and migration legislation that enshrines international standards for the legal protection of migrants and promoting women’s groups and migrant associations are key aspects of this. So is including women in discussions between governments, employers, trade unions, civil society and migrant communities to ensure the contribution of migrants is recognized and their rights are protected. Initiatives to improve the safety of migrants, especially women, during their journeys as well as in their destinations are also needed. Only by empowering and supporting the role of women in migration can its potential poverty reducing impact be realized.

 Rosemary Vargas-Lundius, David Suttie and Anja Lund work for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Rosemary is also a member of Migrating out of Poverty's Consortium Advisory Group.

Research on migration – still so much to learn

Eva Maria Egger
 

I have been working on my PhD in Economics for the past year, alongside working as a Quantitative Research Assistant for the DfiD-funded Research Program Consortium ‘Migrating out of Poverty’ (RPC) which supports my studies. I decided to come to the University of Sussex because of its strong focus on research related to development. During my undergraduate degree in Germany I studied development issues, aid and politics. I later spent a short period living and working in Brazil, which is a country with high levels of migration and high levels of socio-economic inequality. Living in a city of more than 7 million inhabitants, I became fascinated by the fact that cities attract so many people, offer the potential of better prospects, but are challenged by fast population growth. I gained quantitative research skills during my MSc in Economics at Sussex, which laid the foundation that my PhD is going to build on. I am currently working on my first PhD-paper where I am asking: What do we know about urban labour markets in emerging and developing economies? What do migrants do in urban destinations? Does moving to the city yield better opportunities? What is the role of the informal sector? There is a lot of speculation and theory out there, and I aim to shed light on these questions with empirical evidence of the dynamics of urban labour markets and the role of workers’ mobility. Inspired by my time there, I am focusing on Brazil, which is a large country with many big cities and lots of people who migrate internally for work. Plus, there is a large informative dataset available to explore my question – an important determinant for quantitative research.

The Migrating out of Poverty RPC aims to combine quantitative and qualitative research to explore the nexus between migration and poverty in Africa and Asia. To contribute to the quantitative research, the core partners in all 5 regions (east, west and southern Africa and south and southeast Asia) are conducting a household survey covering migrant and non-migrant households. The most unique part of the survey is, in my opinion, that we will collect a lot of information on the subjective perception of wellbeing and of changes in the welfare of the households. My responsibility is to use the data from these surveys to calculate descriptive statistics, which can draw a picture of the general migration patterns in each country. Working with Julie Litchfield from the Economics Department at Sussex I also develop econometric strategies to answer more specific research questions and I then run these models in the software.

In the past few months I have worked on the first dataset from our partners in Ghana, the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS) based in Accra. Our aim is now to explore the connection between migration and subjective wellbeing at the household level. These results can then be used as the starting point for further, more detailed qualitative exploration of the migration-poverty nexus.

The experience of working with a ‘fresh’ dataset no one else has used before is really exciting for me. It is a great opportunity to learn about migration and the experience of migrants as well as their households from this data and from the data, which will be collected in the other partner countries. I hope, that we can gain some more knowledge about the migration and poverty nexus from this.

While I focus on the experience at destination of migrants in my PhD, my research for the RPC has gathered rich information on the origin households of migrants. By combining these two strands of research I hope to understand better why migration is such a commonly observed household strategy to improve wellbeing.

 

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.