Migration decision making and migration behavior in rural Kenya

Abstract

Most micro theories of migration assume that all migrants have decided to move and all nonmigrants have decided not to move. The data for this study consisting of 1st round interviews of 1077 and 2nd round interviews (after 9 months) from 972 youths between 13 and 21 in 4 sublocations in rural Kenya call this assumption into question. They suggest that at a given time only about 35% of young people are contemplating migration and 1/3 of these ultimately decide to move. Also over the interval studied here the nondecision-processor migrants actually outnumbered decision processing migrants (defined as those cognitively aware of migration as an alternative who develop an expectation to migrate or not) so that only about 41% of migrants showed a clear indication of having made a decision. Similarly among the nonmigrants the data suggest that a decision not to move was made by close to 1/3. Neither a majority of migrants nor nonmigrants made the decision customarily attributed to them. A model was therefore developed to identify factors leading to migration decision making assuming that in the pretransitional state decisions are made for youth primarily by male family heads. As children become more exposed to extra-family influences they become increasingly aware of migration as an alternative. This model explained 26% of the variance in the decision-making variable. The data make it clear that understanding of migration as a process could be enhanced for those who decide and those who do not.