Rural Urban Destinations of Migrants and Community Differentiation in a Rural Region of Chile

Abstract

Empirical surveys of rural-urban migration in Latin America have often tended to treat the rural communities of origin as essentially identical. Systematic distinctions among rural communities have not often been made except perhaps by regions within a nation in part because most of the important internal migration surveys have been conducted in the capitals or major cities and consequently have only the information provided by the immigrants concerning their rural communities of origin. (For the major immigration study conducted in Chile the country of interest in this paper see Elizaga 1966 and 1970). Rural based surveys are necessary to allow one to distinguish among rural communities of origin and to provide information on rural-rural and non-migrants as well as rural-urban migrants. In another paper (Conning 1971) using data from a survey conducted in various rural communities of less than 2000 population located in a small rural region of Chile the author found that the most rural category of communities had an age standardized rural-urban out migration rate to places of 10000 population or more that was 57 percent that of the least rural communities (for persons of both sexes exposed to the risk of migration between the ages 12 and 29). When considering only moves for employment the most rural communities had a standardized rural-urban rate even less only 41 percent of the least rural communities. (excerpt)