Socio-economic Factors Influencing Migration: the Case of Eastern Zone Tigrai Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Migration is the movement of people from one place to another place. This type of movement can be a permanent, temporary, volunteer or forced. People can move from one place to another place outside the country, like moving from Asia to Europe, like moving from Ethiopia to America and inside the country, like Adigrat to Addis Ababa and from Gondar to Humera immigration. People migrate from place to place due to different reason among these, economic, social, political and environmental reasons are taking a lion share. The main goal of this study was to investigate the causes of migration from the eastern zone of Tigrai. The study focuses on to identify the socio-economic and demographic factors of the migrant to leave their place of origin in the study area. To achieve this objective, both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed. The Primary data was collected mainly from the returnee migrants, zone Labor and Social affairs office and from any sample of the study area economically active adult populations (15-49). The data gathered from four purposefully selected (discrete) in the eastern zone. The tools used to gather the primary data were questionnaires. A total of 180 respondents were selected for the survey questionnaire by using simple random sampling technique from purposefully selected discrete. The descriptive statistical method was employed to analyze these quantitative data by using Stata software and also Binary Logistic regression was also applied to analyze the determinant factors of migration by using Stata software. The result of the study indicated that migration is dominated by young aged (15-25), single male or female, their education level is primary education, their job unpaid family worker and those whose family size is large. unemployment, poverty, agricultural land scarcity, the individual wants to open up a personal business, a natural disaster like famine drought, low access to credit and experience of crop failure are the key push factors of migration. On the other hand, employment opportunities, better income from abroad and smugglers at destination country are identified as pull factors of migration. The main determinant forces or variables significantly affect migration decision in the econometric analysis were age, family size, family shocks, family or individual respondent land size and high income at the destination. Regarding the way of migration, most of the migrants were out illegal way about 75% Based on these findings. Keyword: migration, illegal migration, binary logit model, returnee migrant, non-migrant