Spontaneous rural migration in southern Sri Lanka – the migrants and the determinants of out–migration

Abstract

Sri Lanka is mainly a rural society with only 21.5% of its population living in urban areas. In contrast to the situation in most developing countries, the internal migration in Sri Lanka is predominantly intra-rural from the wet zone to the dry zone. The dry zone of Sri Lanka covers two-thirds of the country's area but contains only 43% of the total population (Department of Census & Statistics 1986). Since before independence in 1948 the government of Sri Lanka has implemented a policy of redistributing people from the wet zone to the dry zone. Thus, most of the rural migration is induced by the government. Migrants are granted land and certain implements to start cultivation in new settlement and irrigation schemes. These new settlements also attract a number of spontaneous migrants who encroach upon state land and often go into petty trading (Abeysekera 1984). However, in certain areas outside these schemes there is also considerable spontaneous in-migration by encroachers who cultivate chena (shifting cultivation). This may be regarded as a spontaneous frontier migration since they open up new land without any government assistance. On the contrary, some of these chena cultivators are fined because of their burning of primary forest. Very few studies have focused on this type of spontaneous rural migration, since most studies of migration in Sri Lanka tend to concentrate on general patterns of internal migration and migration-related policies (e.g. Abeysekera 1981, Gunawardena 1982a, Indraratna et al. 1983, Kearney & Miller 1984, Gunawardena 1985).