Migration Decision Making: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Microlevel Studies in Developed and Developing Countries

Abstract

This book focuses on the study of migration at the individual microlevel. This approach emphasizes the process of migration decision making. The book addresses the need for a systematic evaluation of microlevel theories and models of migration decision making in the work of demographers economists geographers planners anthropologists and psychologists. Several trends indicate the rising significance of migration in population studies: 1) there is a slowdown in the rate of natural increase which results in the dynamics of internal population growth patterns shifting to migration 2) the enlarged size of rural-urban population movement in developing countries excerbate serious problems of unemployment housing and education 3) there is the emergence of a population deconcentration trend through metropolitan-nonmetropolitan area migration in developing countries and 4) there is increasing attention to migration policy in developing countries. The microlevel determinants of internal migration are predicated on the knowledge that transfers of population will be internal and not international. The concept of decision making is used in its most general form to refer to the formation of an intuition or disposition towards migration behavior. 3 themes are addressed by the authors: 1) systematic review and evaluation of microlevel frameworks and models of the migration decision 2) applicability of microlevel migration models and frameworks to developing and developed countries and 3) general policy implications of microlevel migration models. One of the more fundamental arguments in this book is that all noncoercive migration-related policies must respond to individual and/or household-level migration decisions. Commonalities in the authors migration decision analysis are: 1) emphasis on microlevel decisions 2) an assumption that the decision makers are rational 3) the emphasis on the motivations of migration information and actualizing decisions to move 4) the design of research on microlevel aspects of migration and 5) explanation of the decision to move or stay and different types of movement.