Supporting the social mobility of trapped populations in very poor urban areas

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Urbanisation is the defining feature of global population distribution. Until at least 2050, city growth will be concentrated in developing countries and most of that growth will come from migration from rural areas. Many poor, rural migrants will end up in the poorest neighbourhoods of these cities. These population movements have always been important pathways into poverty, but this is exacerbated by the increasingly rapid pace of urbanisation and by important new contexts such as the vulnerability of urban centres to climate change. A recent UK Government Office of Science report highlighted the potential for migrants to be 'trapped' in these impoverished environments since their extreme poverty means that they unable to return to the areas they have come from or move elsewhere in the city. In contrast, other recent research suggests that urban areas provide valuable opportunities for migrants which are typically preferable to the rural poverty many of them have left behind. This project investigates when migration from rural to urban areas becomes a pathway into poverty and how policy can support rural-urban migrants to access urban opportunities and escape from poverty. There are three central questions. First, research considers under what circumstances rural-urban migration presents an opportunity for poor people and what factors contribute to them becoming 'trapped'. Second, the project investigates the relationship between physical and socio-economic mobility. This will consider both mobility within the city and ongoing connections with migrants' rural households. It focuses particularly on migrants' own perspectives of what they consider to be successful integration in the city. Finally, the project assesses the attitudes of city government and other significant actors, such as community organisations, police, NGOs and international organisations. This will focus on ways in which these institutions facilitate or prevent new migrants integrating into city life. In order to respond to these three questions, the project draws on a series of innovative methods to capture migrants' own attitudes to their migration, combining in-depth, individual interviews and broad surveys. The limited recent research on these issues has tended to focus on a single urban area at a single time period. This project contributes to this recent research with a comparative, longitudinal approach. The project investigates the success of migrants to four cities in four different countries: Harare (Zimbabwe), Hargeisa (Somaliland), Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Colombo (Sri Lanka) at two time points one year apart, in addition to interviews during the course of the year. These four cities allow investigation of the same processes in very different contexts, yet there are sufficient similarities to make comparison worthwhile. All four cities face significant ongoing rural-urban migration, both political conflict and climate change have been important factors encouraging this migration and all four face rapid urban development as a result. This project is conducted in close collaboration with research centres in all four cities. It has also developed in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) associated with the Migrants on the Margins research programme. The RGS-IBG will provide additional support for the programme through educational outreach and communications expertise. The project will have three main impacts. First, it will generate new knowledge about how rural-urban migration can help to provide a route out of poverty. Second, it will communicate the results of this research to a variety of audiences who will be able to use it to inform new policy interventions. Finally, it will help to build capacity to conduct similar research in the future with international collaborators and community organisations in the research neighbourhoods.