Rural-Urban Migration: Causes, Migrants' Town livelihood Activities and Social Capital in Berehet District, Ethiopia Abebe Adefris Tefera Master of Philosophy Thesis in Development Studies Specializing in Geography Submitted to the Department of Geography Faculty of Social Science and Technology Management Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim, Norway May, 2014 Dedication: If you were alive, it would have then become my extreme happiness this days in the world. I missed you my departed Mom and Dad. This work is dedicated to you. i Acknowledgement First and for most I would like to thank the almighty God who allowed me to be able to see what the world looks like and partly to enable me to live with health. It is only because of his willingness that I could fail and pass several trucks in the long life journey which my soul has commenced. My next appreciation goes to my advisors Cathrin Brun/Associate Professor/ and my co-advisor Thomas Sætre /PhD Candidate/who relentlessly supported me to take direction in my research work. At the very beginning, I was dispersed in an open spaces to start writing the research and was with hope that seems unreachable. But their invaluable advise harvested me to come to one point from the spaces where I had been. I inner heartedly would like to thank both of them not only for giving advise but also giving resources they have and for the knowledge they shared me. The next appreciation goes to my research informants who gave me their invaluable responses for the questions I raised to get data about the research questions. They gave me not only the data but they also scarified their time to talk with for long time. Next I would like to express my gratitude to Norwegian government and the whole citizens in the nation who realized my two years living here in Norway by providing financial support and free education. I also owe my thanks to all lecturers and supporting management officials here in NTNU in general and in geography department in particular. In the last, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my lovely girl friend Firehiwot Takele who always advise me to be strong, committed and visionary. FT, thank you for your endless moral support in my work. Abebe Adefris Tefera ii Abstract Ranging from the smallest local to the largest international migration is a substance in the process of globalization which drives the present economic, political, social, cultural and technological engines of individuals and groups across various geographic domains in the world. The smallest internal rural to urban migration, which is driven by various factors and ended up with different outcomes in the everyday lives of migrants in towns, is therefore, not isolated from the global process. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the diverse cause to rural- urban migration and migrants' town livelihood activities in Berehet district, Ethiopia which is also thought as the fraction of global process. This study also further focuses on migrants' social capital after migration in the town Metehbila. With the application of qualitative approach, the study used Lee's push- pull, the new economy of migration theory and the livelihood approach. It is from the ground that theories and approaches are important to visualize the world in every context and hence, they are used in this research to construct and define the research problem itself and to frame the entire process of the researching. Both the migration theories and livelihood approach are used interdependently to understand the various physical and socio-economic causes for rural to urban migration. The Push factors which are mentioned in Lee's migration theory are the vulnerability contexts in livelihood framework and hence, they are used together than independently. The new economy migration theory is used to envisage migration decision, economic causes for migration and the contending issues of internal migration remittance. The livelihood approach is used to frame migrants' urban livelihood activities and strategies that they established to make their living real in the town. It further is used to concretize the social integrations that migrants develop with urban host communities. With the combination of the theories and the livelihood framework components-vulnerability contexts, social capital, strategies and outcome, the analytical framework was developed to entirely shape this study. With life history mode of analysis and other tabular description approaches of the data which are obtained from primarily and secondary sources, the study found that the causes for rural to urban migration in Berehet district are physical factors such as absence of rainfall, land shortage(also economic) and family death. Socio-economic factors such as forced early marriage, the resulting fistula, conflict with land borders, education and formal marriage. The study in the cloud of socio- cultural factors shows that the district is under increasing human right abuse, abduction, rape and subsequent urban ward migration. It also found that, most of the economic factors are in vision level by migrants. Migrants after their migration are in increasing desire to get better living with better occupations and incomes. In investigating the urban forms of migrants livelihood strategies, the study shows that most migrants are participating in local drink preparation such as tela and areke selling, retailing onion and potatoes on crowded market. Few migrants are also engaging in wood and welding works, stone cutting and street work/begging. The study generally shows that most migrants in the town established survival livelihood strategies by which they only work to eat and trend the same fashion of living as they were yesterday and decades ago. Contrary to this, few migrants are at the verge to maintain adaptive livelihood strategy by which they relatively could develop better livelihood in the town. Again, the study under investigating the choices of livelihood strategies by migrants, shows that male and female migrants make a stratified working cultural space in the town in which male migrants do not work what women migrants do and the vise versa. It is those male migrants in better off and on the verge to developed sustainable livelihood while women migrants are subjected with indoor activities by which they show no progress in their livelihood in the town. At the end, the study found that migrants in the town formed various town associations with their town host communities. The associations are Idir, Iqub, Tsiwa and Baltna. The study found that all of these associations are variously important to migrants for securing social capital which serves them to alleviate their everyday town living challenges such death, health shocks and property losses. iii Table of Contents Contents Page Dedication .................................................................................................................................. i Acknowledgement .................................................................................................................... ii Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents .................................................................................................................... iv List of Acronyms ................................................................................................................... viii Chapter One .............................................................................................................................. 1 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1Background ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Statement of the Problem ................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Research Objectives ......................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 5 1.5 Significance of the Study .................................................................................................. 6 1.6 Organization of the Thesis ................................................................................................ 6 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................................. 7 2. Descriptions to Research Area ............................................................................................... 7 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 Location and Historical perspectives ................................................................................ 7 2.3 Climate Conditions in Berehet ....................................................................................... 11 2.4 Population ....................................................................................................................... 11 2.4.1Trends in Berehet Population Growth ..................................................................... 12 2.4.2Age Group Structure ................................................................................................