RURAL PERSPECTIVE ON RURAL-URBAN MIGRATION: ASYSTEMIC LITERATURE OVERVIEW

Since the establishment of cities, migration is one of the main topics of several studies. Especially after urbanization, studies on rural-urban migration increased in number focusing on its reasons and effects and immigrants’ behaviors. But today, the patterns of rural-urban migration is transforming. Its causes and effects on rural communities remained limitedly studied. Our aim is to offer a better understanding of the changing behavior of rural-urban migrants and their impacts on rural communities. To reach our aim, the existing literature is systemicly analyzed to create a common ground on the findings of early studies from a meta-analytic approach. We collected data from 13 appropriate studies offering insight about the reasons for migration, push-pull factors and economic, physical and social effects of rural-urban migration. Logistic regression and descriptive statistics are derived from 21 cases. According to the results, social/family ties hand in hand education opportunities in urban areas are today’s main reasons to migrate from rural to urban areas with economic ones. The results also show that, rural push factors are mainly social factors such as lack of social amenities, lack of education facilities and migration of family members. In addition, urban pull factors are mostly economic ones; employment, job opportunities or higher wages. Even though rural-urban migration affects both rural and urban areas, due to higher population in urban areas, studies offer an urban perspective. Yet migration also affects rural areas directly and reasons for migration connected to rural areas as push factors. Moreover, social dimensions are also important to study as the current changes in rural areas has a great impact on people’s behaviors. Our attempt brings a new discussion to the literature by offering new perspectives to further studies to focus on different angles of rural-urban migration.