Pakistan is one of the
countries in the developing world where the shocking rate of urbanization and the
related problems of housing and employment are caused not only by natural urban
increase, but also by an enormous influx of migrants. Karachi is a relevant example
in Pakistan which very clearly presents the magnitude of the problems. Rural-to-urban
migration is significant because of its close association with economic transformation
from agriculture to non-agriculture and from a rural to an urban way of living.
Rural-to-urban migration is important for social policy and urban planning.
The author of the book
presents a case study of Karachi which is based on seven chapters. The first
chapter consists of theoretical introduction. It discusses the concepts of
migration in developing countries, especially non-permanent types of mobility
such as circular migration are particularly discussed.
In the second chapter,
migration is related to family and household of the migrant. In the third
chapter, a background to rural emigration is given. A history of the agricultural
and rural development in Pakistan is drawn. The authors stresses that the attitude
of the government towards the poor people is discriminatory.
The fourth chapter presents
the results of the pilot study. The concept of circular migration has been operationalized
as the author tries to suggest that a low degree of commitment to the village
of origin results from several factors such as having no family and/or property
in the place of origin (p. 9). In chapter five, Selier gives the results of the
research survey carried out among the migrants living in a number of katchi abadis (or bastis, i.e. squatter settlements).
In chapter six, a research study
on migration and low-income housing in Karachi is presented. The study was
carried out in parts of Orangi. The aim was to discover whether recently
arrived migrants confronted more problems in obtaining and building their own
property or those people who had arrived earlier. The last chapter discusses
some of the consequences of the migration-type for community-life in the
surveyed bastis of Karachi.
The dominant expression of
internal migration is rural-urban migration (p. 7). The author writes that
Pakistan can be considered as an example of the general migration phenomenon.
This book is an attempt to make the work readable not only for scholars by also
for policy-makers and for others.
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