The Dynamics of Migration, Health and Livelihoods

The Dynamics of Migration, Health and Livelihoods: INDEPTH Network Perspectives

The Dynamics of Migration, Health and Livelihoods examines the interconnected effects of population movement on health systems, economic survival strategies, and overall community development. For years at INDEPTH sites, counting migrants has been viewed as part of the demographic accounting required to know exactly who is living in a community.
The Migration and Urbanization Working Group (MUWG) was established by a group of INDEPTH researchers who believed that migration was much more than
that, convinced that understanding migration was key to some of the most critical issues communities face. This book is a result of that collaboration.
Migration is defined as people moving into and out of the HDSS study sites. The book, therefore, presents a different view from most other migration literature
due to the different data structure employed in the analyses. Features of the data include the ongoing registration of a whole district population (or an area of similar
size) so that accurate rates can be computed, based on verified moves that occurred in the population. Longitudinal analytic methods, such as event history analysis,
pay special attention to the exposures related to migration. Migration plays a key role in the shaping of family livelihoods and well-being, but discerning those linkages has proved difficult, precisely because of the dynamic nature of migration, which involves people moving in and out of households over widely varying time frames. There is a scarcity of datasets adequately equipped to examine these dynamic relations. Furthermore, different parts of the world have emphasized different aspects of migration. Countries experiencing high immigration are concerned with the impact of international migration and the adaptation of immigrants in host communities. Internal migration is more of an issue in developing countries where the proportion of the rural population is larger and the economic transition associated with internal migration is higher. But, it is precisely these poorer countries where the least data is available to examine internal migration. New data and scholarship are thus urgently needed on internal migration in developing countries. This book focuses on internal migration and how it impacts health and education patterns and the dynamics of poverty at the household level. With this, we hope to add to the trend that INDEPTH multi-country data provides new insight into population variables. This volume is a peer-reviewed collection of twelve chapters prepared by the INDEPTH Migration and Urbanization Working Group. The first four are introductory and overview chapters, followed by seven site chapters from Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites and an epilogue. The site chapters are divided into two themes. The first theme is Migration and Livelihoods, containing chapters from two Asian sites (Kanchanaburi and Matlab) and one African site (Agincourt); and the second theme is Migration and Health, with one Asian site (Filabavi) and three African sites (Kisumu, Nairobi and Manhiça).