Tragedy of Rural Youth Out-Migration and Its Socio-Economic Consequences in Lemo Woreda of Hadiya Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Fikreab Mekebo

doi:10.7176/jesd/11-17-02

Abstract

Out-migration affects the socio- economic situation of the youths, families and people at large in a country. However, rural youth out-migration in Ethiopia in general and Hadiya Zone specifically has become more common business. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the causes and consequences of youth out-migration from Lemo woreda of Hadiya zone in Southern Ethiopia to South Africa. Primary and secondary sources of data were used. Primary information collected from returnees and families of migrants through interview schedule, FGDs and KI guidelines. 100 respondents were selected for survey questionnaire by purposive sampling technique. Descriptive statistical method is employed to analyze quantitative data by using SPSS whereas the qualitative data was analyzed using description. The result of the study reported that in Lemo woreda out migration is dominated by young aged 23-29. The largest proportion of youth migrants have faced imprisonment, hunger and social crises, vulnerability to disease, and loss of life during traveling to South Africa, Dependency on remittance, low educational achievement, loss of life, and shortage of labor force in the origin are among the problems due to migration. Based on these findings recommendations are given to concerned bodies to give due attention to help youths to study and create better job opportunities in their origin. Keywords: Ethiopia, Youth, out-migration, returnees DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-17-02 Publication date: September 30 th 2020

Highlights

Migration is defined as changing the place of residence by crossing a specified administrative or political boundary
Youth migration is a form of productive labor migration and the people most likely to leave are those of working age and students
The financial and material improvements of Ethiopian migrants in South Africa – evidenced and documented through remittances, different videos and photographs – is in sharp contrast to the low living standard of the population in rural area of Lemo woreda, encouraged youths to migrate to South Africa

Summary

Introduction

Migration is defined as changing the place of residence by crossing a specified administrative or political boundary. From Lemo woreda a total of 8,266 people (2,066 female and 6,200 male) within the same year interval This irregular migration has high consequence in the life of the youth migrants (Hadiya Zone Human Resource and Social Affairs Department, 2018). Most of the young who migrate to the South Africa are economically active and are heading in pursuit of “dream” of capturing the green pasture there This problem is widely observed in the Southern parts of Ethiopia, in Kembata-Tembaro and Hadiya zones (Habte, 2015; IOM, 2013). According to the report of Hadiya zone Human resource and social affairs department report 2018, totally 61,148 youths (female 13,452 and 47,698 male) have been migrated illegally to South Africa from the zone in 6 years period from 2013 to 2018. Methods of data analysis Simple descriptive statistics (percentage and frequency) for quantitative data and narration have been used to analyze data generated

Findings

Result and Discussion

Conclusion