Migration objectives and their fulfillment: A micro study of the rural-urban migrants of the slums of Dhaka city

Abstract

Rural-Urban migration plays an important role in poverty reduction and economic development. In Bangladesh rural-urban migration is the most important factor for rapid urbanization with urban slums being a popular destination for poor rural-urban migrants. More than 15 million people live in the slums of six divisional cities of Bangladesh. Capital Dhaka alone contains about 3.4 million people in 4966 slums. Focusing on the two largest slums of Dhaka, the study reveals that predominantly migrants came from the northern and southern parts of the country and carried with them dreams of prosperity. This study evaluates the migration objectives, status and the fulfillment of their migration objectives based on a survey of 373 randomly selected temporary and permanent migrants. It was found that 82% of the migrants perceived that their migration objectives as had been either totally fulfilled or on the way of fulfillment. It was also discovered that although 68.10% of the migrants were satisfied with the socio- economic attainment of their migration objectives and wanted to come back to their place of origin after saving enough money, so that they could live the rest of their life out of poverty, they could not do so. The rural lack of earning opportunities did not permit them to reverse the rural-urban migration trend.