Why Secondary Towns Can Be Important for Poverty Reduction : A Migrant's Perspective

Ingelaere, Bert ; Christiaensen, Luc ; De Weerdt, Joachim ; Kanbur, Ravi

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: POVERTY REDUCTION;    MIGRATION;    URBANIZATION;    JOBS;    SECONDARY TOWNS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8193
RP-ID  :  WPS8193

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper develops the concept of"action space" as the range of possibledestinations to which a migrant can realistically move at agiven point in time and, intimately linked to this, the setof possible livelihoods at destination. It shows how thisspace expands and contracts over time through"cumulative causation." Such a dynamic frameworkallows for appreciating the role of secondary towns inrural-urban migration and poverty reduction. Secondary townsoccupy a unique middle ground between semi-subsistenceagriculture and the capitalistic city, between what is closeby and familiar and what is much further away and unknown.By opening the horizons of the (poorer) rural population andfacilitating navigation of the nonfarm economy, secondarytowns allow a broader base of the poor population to becomephysically, economically, and socially mobile. Secondarytowns therefore have great potential as vehicles forinclusive growth and poverty reduction in urbanizingdeveloping countries. These are the insights emerging fromthe in-depth life history accounts of 75 purposivelyselected rural-urban migrants from rural Kagera, in Tanzania.