Cities In World History Ch. 35 - Population And Migration PDF

INTRODUCTION AND MODELS The basic argument is that to understand both the differences in the level and the nature of urbanization throughout the world we have to look at what cities have to offer to their (new) inhabitants in terms of rights and services. The better and more encompassing the offer i...

INTRODUCTION AND MODELS The basic argument is that to understand both the differences in the level and the nature of urbanization throughout the world we have to look at what cities have to offer to their (new) inhabitants in terms of rights and services. The better and more encompassing the offer is, the more people will settle permanently in urban centres and the less they will depend on ethnic or kin networks, and vice versa. In this model ethnicity, whether it is portrayed as tribal or reliance on strong ties, is primarily seen as a function of the institutional completeness of cities. The more services cities provide, the less need there is to rely on kin and co-ethnics, and to spread risks between the city and the countryside. This typology should not be used in a rigid way. Instead it stipulates that when over time conditions change, regions, states, or cities may move through the typology. Furthermore, as we have seen geographical units should not be treated as homogeneous units. Present-day American cities only partly fulfil the criteria of the ‘full citizenship model’ and contain all kinds of pockets that resemble more the realities of the ‘empty citizenship’ model. On the other hand, cities in India or Africa that combine aspects of empty citizenship with a highly segregated civil society, also developed a limited shared public sphere. Such a layered and open typology therefore rejects binary assumptions and implications which privilege the (Western) European city as the master pattern waiting to be followed by the rest of the world The full citizenship model. This model developed in medieval southern European cities and then gradually spread in the direction of north-western Europe. These cities were relatively autonomous and offered their citizens forms of citizenship that freed them of feudal obligations and which transcended kin or ethnic ties. Inhabitants of the city shared a communitas that provided institutional support from poor relief to the regulation of the labour market and a shared public sphere.1 From the 19th century onwards this inclusive model was transferred to the national (and more recently to the supranational) level, with full-scale welfare states and liberal democracies as the zenith of inclusiveness, especially in Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Oceania Especially in Western Europe, the Americas, white settler colonies, and Japan, most migrants to cities, both internal and external, can be classified as ‘citizens on arrival’, which means that legal migrants are treated as citizens and in the long run expected to integrate in their host societies. Racial prejudice played an important role, as in the New World this homogenization was stimulated by discourses about whiteness and deliberate policies to change the racial balance of the country. Well known examples are the American Quota acts from 1917 onwards which favoured north-west Europeans and similar policies in (former) British dominions like Canada and Australia. But Latin American countries were also heavily influenced by racial worldviews. In the latter part of the 19th century Brazil stimulated the immigration of Europeans to counterbalance the former black slave population. Another darker side of the full citizen model is that minorities who were already present (either as ‘native peoples’ or the Roma in Europe) were partly excluded from citizenship. From the 1960s in most democratic states the stress on ethnicity and race gradually shifted to human capital as the main criterion to allow people from other states in as permanent citizens The ethno-national model. In the Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires (with the exception of Istanbul) urbanization levels were much lower than in the rest of Europe and the settlement process, as also in the successor states, was shaped by ethno/religious criteria. Although a shared urban citizenshipcum-public sphere developed to some extent, it was segmented as it interfered with nationalist and religious group thinking, which caused forms of segregation within cities and fostered ethnic and religious ties.3 During and after World War I these multiethnic empires finally dissolved and gave way to the nationstate model. The relative tolerance towards differences suddenly changed into a stress on ethnic homogeneity. In extreme cases this led to genocide (Armenians in Turkey), large-scale population exchanges (Turkey–Greece 1922), ethnic cleansings (Yugoslavian civil war of the 1990s), and virulent forms of discrimination against Jews and Roma, but also national minorities. The external differential citizenship model. In contrast to liberal democratic states, where citizenship rights are in principle meant for all inhabitants, many autocratic, dictatorial, or partially democratic states draw the principal line between insiders and outsiders, with nationality as a key criterion. Natives are treated as full citizens and provided with all kind of rights and (urban) benefits (except political rights), which are denied to aliens. The result is a permanent condition of circularity and temporariness of labour migrants. A good example is the Gulf states, which have been recruiting Asian migrants in large numbers to their expanding cities since the 1970s, but treat them as non-citizens and bar them from citizenship.4 This makes settlement virtually impossible, and they are often expelled when the economy goes down. Similar mechanisms operate in states that developed into democracies but where citizenship is defined in ethnic or religious terms, like Malaysia The internal differential citizenship model. This model refers to states that differentiate citizenship rights among citizens according to their residence, with the aim to restrict and control internal migration from the countryside to the city. As a consequence, rural migrants who settle in cities become either illegal or they are not automatically entitled to civic rights, and equal access to urban services (welfare, education, etc.). This model was widely spread in early modern Europe, but after 1800 remained in force in Russia. Its most extreme version is the Chinese hukou system that was installed by the Communist regime in the 1950s and successfully slowed down rural to urban migrations until the late 1970s.6 But also when the reins were slackened from 1978 onwards rural migrants remained excluded from urban citizenship, creating two classes of city dwellers: those with urban citizenship and access to all kinds of services, and the migrants who were only allowed to work, but whose citizenship was limited to the countryside. Because of the lack of social provisions in the city this model contains strong incentives to return (at least temporarily) to the home region. The ‘empty citizenship’ model. Finally there are cities that have very little to offer to newcomers. These can be found in (sub-Saharan) Africa, parts of Asia (like India) and in different degrees in South America. States and cities in these parts of the world are either too weak or too poor, or for other reasons provide neither a common safety net nor a sense of urban citizenship for (mostly internal) migrants who move to cities. Since Independence people are free to move to cities, but are largely left to themselves in highly segregated slums, isolated from the wealthy and gated parts of the city. To some extent, a ‘lighter’ version can be found in the United States (and to a lesser degree France and Italy) where ‘hyperghettos’ have developed around cities, populated by racial minorities and poor immigrants, which bear a resemblance to the slums and favelas of Calcutta, Lagos, and Rio de Janeiro In order to prevent marginalization many migrants nurture ties with their place of origin and set up various kinds of hometown associations. Such a rural–urban continuum should not only be interpreted as an insurance against social risks, but may also have emotional and spiritual meanings for the migrants and their kin. The preference in China and parts of sub-Saharan Africa to be buried in the home village, as well as ongoing remittances, testify to that. The lack of common civil urban institutions explain the heightened salience of ethnic and kin networks that channel and regulate migration between countryside and towns. Parallel to hometown associations there was room for the creation of ties and allegiances, through work, religion, and leisure, which created at least a partial shared urban culture. How this balance between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civil’, or the ‘subject’ and the ‘citizen’ works out depends on the concrete local and historical context. Finally the strength of the rural–urban links highly depends on the access or right to resources (like land, real estate, or jobs) in the countryside. MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION LEVELS IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD AND BEYOND At the end of the 18th century Europe was not the most urbanized part of the world. If we take 10,000 inhabitants as the urban threshold, its urbanization level was lower than in Japan and the Middle East and not dramatically higher than South America and India. Only China, North America, and Africa lagged behind. Only at the end of the 19th century did Western Europe and the United States surpass the rest of the world These very broad trends, however, hide important differences within Europe (as well as other regions), with respect to economic growth, urbanization, and proletarianization. From the 16th century onwards north-western Europe, for example, developed into a highly urbanized and commercialized region, very different from most other parts of Europe. This ‘little divergence’ has its roots in the late Middle Ages and it explains the rise of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century and that of England in the 18th as world powers. As in other continents, in most parts of Europe, especially the north and the east, the bulk of the population lived in villages and had little urban experience In the 19th century the combined industrial and agrarian revolutions caused an unprecedented growth of the population and pushed urbanization levels up, first in the Atlantic world (Europe and North America), followed by Southern America and Japan. This spectacular rise in urbanization levels, however, should not primarily be interpreted as the consequence of increased mobility. Migration to cities grew, but overall migration levels were already quite high, both in Europe and in other parts of the world long before the Industrial Revolution began As in earlier periods (see above, Ch. 22), most migrants in cities were highly mobile and moved between towns, but also between cities and the countryside. Employment perspectives in the city, for example in the building sector, were still too uncertain and unstable, and for many young migrants work in the city was part of their rural–urban life-cycle. Only when the urban labour market started to offer year round jobs and agriculture underwent further mechanization, did the links with the countryside weaken.8 This temporary character of the migration to cities also characterized much of the transatlantic migrations. In particular, male labour migrants from southern Europe behaved as ‘birds of passage’. With the transport revolution (steam trains and ships), the costs and duration of transatlantic passages decreased considerably after 1860, and millions of workers navigated the new Atlantic space on a temporary basis Before World War I, the share of return migrations among Italians, Spaniards, but also workers from South-Eastern Europe, was very high. For many of them these temporary long-distance migrations fitted well in their household strategies, which were based on income pooling through temporary migrations that had a long tradition. The only difference after 1860 was the scale of their migration field In the 20th century new forms of temporary migration developed. First in the inter-war period, with France, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands as major poles of attraction; second, during ‘Les trentes glorieuses’ (1945–1975) with the guest worker programmes in Western Europe; and finally during the first decade of the 21st century a highly volatile labour migration system developed with workers from Eastern Europe (especially Poland and Roumania) moving to the west and the south. In time many guest workers settled for good, and the overwhelming part of them in cities. There they were joined by both newcomers from the colonies (in the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Portugal) and by asylum seekers, refugees, and high-skilled migrants from all over the world. Immigration to the United States decreased dramatically during and after World War I and only resumed in the 1970s, now predominantly from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In the meantime the Great Migration of African Americans to northern US cities and temporary workers from Mexico (through the ‘Bracero’ program, 1942–1967) had a dramatic impact on the ethnic composition of American cities. The result of the various migrations in the 20th century in the Atlantic world was that the share of foreign-born jumped to some 10 per cent of the population in most countries, but in cities this could easily reach 30 per cent or more The phenomenon of chain migration, with migrants embedded in their own ethnic networks and developing an infrastructure of ethnic associations, is well known both in the early modern and modern period and can be witnessed in all parts of the world. The extensiveness and duration, however, vary widely and depend on both the intentions and preferences of the migrants themselves and on the urban (and national) opportunity structures. Especially the nature of urban institutions and their inclusiveness towards migrants is crucial to explain different patterns within Europe and in a global perspective Starting with internal migrants in 19th-century Western Europe, we can ascertain that ethnicity did matter and that many of them were considered not only as country bumpkins, but also culturally as aliens. This pertained especially to those whose dialects or religion differed from the national standard, like the Bretons and Auvergnats in Paris, or the Irish in British and the Poles in German cities. All were officially citizens, but were perceived and treated as fundamentally different. Many of the Irish and the Poles also stressed their national cohesiveness and established a dense network of ethnic institutions. In the long run (mostly after the second generation) the ascribed and self-chosen ethnic identity faded and the descendants of these migrants blended into the urban environment. This was largely true even for one of the most despised minorities in Europe, the Jews, many of whom during the 19th century also moved to cities as internal migrants and gradually assimilated, although in the private sphere many held on to a ‘light’ version of Jewish identity The example of the Jews immediately reminds us of important differences between Western and Eastern Europe when it comes to the salience of religion and ethnicity. Whereas in the west citizenship was largely inclusive and did not pose huge barriers to formerly discriminated groups, ethnic categorizations proved more resilient as one moved east. During the 19th century especially the three large multiethnic empires (Austrian-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian) adopted a virulent nationalism that defined ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities as fundamentally different, even if they shared the same nationality. As a result members of such minority groups who settled in cities remained visible, even over the long term, and therefore fall into our second model (the ethno-national model). Thus, even within Europe a shared public sphere and forms of civil society clearly had limits Apart from France, where immigration was promoted for demographic reasons from the 1920s onwards, most post-war Western European countries were opposed to permanent immigration, but because of the economic boom period between the end of the 1940s and the middle of the 1970s temporary foreign labour was deemed unavoidable. In the United Kingdom labour scarcity was solved by migrants from the colonies, but on the Continent by the recruitment of male guest workers from southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia) and soon also Turkey and north Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria). When the oil crisis hit Europe in the 1970s, something unexpected happened. While unemployment levels went up steeply, Turks and Moroccans decided to stay and call for their families to join them. This led to a mass immigration to Western European cities at the beginning of a long period of economic recession in the late 1970s and 1980s. The reason for this badly timed mass immigration was two fold: first of all since the 1960s these migrants had built up social and legal rights through their contributions to the welfare state, and secondly—and this distinguishes them from most southern European guest workers—the decision to close the borders in the mid-1970s for labour migrants had the opposite effect. It was only then that non-European guest workers realized that by leaving they would give up all their rights and would never be admitted back in, while the alternative in their countries of origin was unemployment without social benefits That their settlement process would lead to social problems, such as high unemployment, youth criminality, under-performing at school, and segregation in derelict neighbourhoods, need not come as a surprise. The bad timing of the immigration combined with low human capital was bound to create integration problems, which were further highlighted by the growing stigmatization of Islam. Given this background it is remarkable that so many children of these migrants are doing rather well at school and in the labour market. At the same time the longterm perspective of a considerable number of them is gloomy, as they are locked in inner city and banlieu kind of ghettos, where crime and oppositional cultures are rampant The socio-economic and cultural problems that resulted from the immigration have given way to a widespread pessimism about the possibilities of integration, a fear that orthodox Muslims will create a ‘Eurabia’. Structural similarities with the difficult and lengthy integration process of Catholic Irish and Russian Jews in England and the United States a century earlier are often denied, if considered at all. Indepth analyses of migrants then and now, however, show that such comparisons are highly relevant. Although it is clear that different family systems, cultural practices, and religious values lead to partial ethnic group formation in European cities, especially among migrants with a Muslim and Hindu background, there are ample indications that their children are integrating, both structurally (in the domains of work, education, and housing) and—albeit more slowly—in terms of identification (marriages, friends, associations). Transnational ties and practices are still nourished, but over time lose significance and intensity. As in the United States the mainstream in European cities is gradually changing and becoming more inclusive to the children of migrants who enrich and partly change the mainstream with their own qualities Given the unfavourable circumstances (bad timing of the immigration and the problematization of immigration), this mutual integration process is remarkable and shows the strength of the inclusive and egalitarian West European citizenship model, that treats legal migrants and their descendants in principle as equals and offers them a range of urban (and national) institutions, including welfare benefits, political rights, education, the possibility of mingling in the public sphere, and ample opportunities to add their own institutions to an already vibrant civil society. That this also results in conflicts and discriminatory practices towards these newcomers does not prevent the ongoing integration process. The relative openness and inclusiveness of West European states and cities was furthermore helped by the use of deliberate inclusive definitions of (post) colonial migrants, that extends also to the German Aussiedler (descendants of erstwhile German colonists in Eastern Europe). French, British, German, Portuguese, and Dutch governments from the late 1940s onwards chose to define them as part of the national body or as citizens of the common empire, thus stressing their right to settle in the ‘mother country’ and being treated as equals. Ethnicity was to some extent recognized but largely downplayed in favour of a common national identity. On the other side of the Atlantic, developments in the United States bear important similarities, but also highlight crucial differences. Notwithstanding pessimism about the long-term integration of new immigrants, empirical research shows ongoing converging trends. Children of current Asian and Hispanic immigrants still prefer English as the standard language and share core values of patriotism, capitalism, and individualism, notwithstanding the pull of ethnic networks.13 However, in the United States formal and informal urban ethnic institutions play a bigger role in migrants’ lives—mainly because the welfare state is much less developed and social and economic equality are not seen as per se desirable. The most obvious difference with Europe is the obsession with race, especially blackness, rather than religion. The social and cultural distance between ‘white’ and ‘black’ Americans is still considerable, which explains the hugely disadvantaged position of a large part of the African American population. This is most visible in the many vast urban black ghettos, from which the state has largely withdrawn and in which poverty, unemployment, broken families, and criminality are rampant URBAN CITIZENSHIP IN CHINA In stark contrast to their Japanese neighbours, in the 19th and 20th centuries the Chinese displayed a reluctance to settle in cities and the urbanization level therefore remained rather low, with the exception of regions like the lower Yangtze.15 Around 1800 the difference with Europe was still small, but there were already important differences. Where in Western Europe most urbanites inhabited a large number of relatively small cities which integrated the surrounding countryside in the market economy, in China large cities (over 100,000), along with widespread manufacturing in the countryside,16 predominated. In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries China remained heavily rural and only from the end of the 1970s did urbanization levels go up steeply, rising from 17 per cent in 1978 to 45 per cent in 2008. This Chinese pattern was strongly shaped by both state policies and also cultural preferences that valued enduring contacts with one’s place of origin. The most dominant theme in discussions about Chinese cities which has major repercussions for the way we interpret migration and settlement processes, is Weber’s claim that Chinese cities did not constitute a real urban community, because the tradition of lineages and the ancestral cult (‘the magic closure of clans’) prevented the emergence of an urban civic confederation. According to this view, forms of civil society and public sphere barely developed. This would explain why most migrants remained locked in their own ethnic (hometown) associations known as huiguan, and developed a strong ‘sojourner’ mentality that kept the bonds with the home village or region as well as their own language alive. This was deemed crucial because of the pivotal role of the ancestral cult which among other things prescribed that one had to be buried ‘at home’ and thus continue the spiritual link with one’s ancestors. Apart from burials, migrants and their descendants also sent back remittances and returned for visits during festivals like Chinese New Year. The Chinese reality, however, was much more diverse and highly dependent on the specific historical context. As we saw from Chs. 17 and 28, there were many Chinas and differences between cities and various parts of China were considerable. A good example is Yangzhou in the north-east, close to Nanking (Nanjing).17 In this bustling commercial and immigrant town, dominated by merchants from Huizhou, migrants with many different linguistic backgrounds soon developed a common identity and a common urban language, while at the same time certain merchant groups displayed a strong ethnic cohesiveness and sojourner mentality. In other towns the impact of native-place associations was much more prominent and illustrates the centrality of the attachment to ‘home’.18 However, such a focus easily leads to essentialist, static, and simplistic accounts of the settlement process of rural migrants. Whether native-place associations were created, depended on wealth, and rich merchant groups in particular built temples for their local gods and burial sites that functioned as a substitute for the home region. In Shanghai the proliferation of huiguans stood in the way of a common urban identity and language, but it did not entirely prevent shared urban experiences and class identities. Nativeplace associations proved very flexible and able to adapt to waves of modernization. In the latter part of the 19th century they became more democratic and less ethnic. When the state imploded at the beginning of the 20th century, it was these commercial urban institutions that took over and expanded their activities in public services, policing, and poor relief. With the Communist takeover in 1949, China initially adopted the Soviet model of development that stressed urbanization and industrialization. This set off a huge migration stream to Chinese cities. As this threatened the privileged welfare provisions of urban citizens, the state soon took measures, including deportation, to discourage people from leaving the countryside. The cornerstone of these measures was the so-called hukou household registration legislation in 1958, that made it very difficult and often impossible for rural folk to settle in cities. Apart from safeguarding the differentiated welfare regime, the state could thus control internal migration, slow down urban growth and thus prevent the uncontrolled creation of slums.19 In China the choice to produce industrial goods in the countryside appeared a gigantic failure that cost some 45 million Chinese their lives and only in the course of the 1970s did the regime embark upon a ‘coastal development strategy’, starting with special economic zones in 1979 and complete freedom of movement in 1994. As a result, temporary migration to cities, predominantly in the east and the south-east, increased exponentially: from 6.6 million in 1982 to around 200 million in 2010. Although the liberalization since 1978 has pushed up urbanization levels dramatically, the discriminatory effects of the hukou legislation are still felt. Many migrants do not have entrance to urban institutions, like housing, jobs, education, and poor relief, unless they can afford to buy urban citizenship. Some cities like Shanghai have started to experiment with granting welfare benefits to skilled migrants, but many other towns are afraid that relaxation of the rules will be too costly for the local taxpayers. Most migrants seem to accept the situation, which can be explained by their own cultural preferences to foster ties with their home village and return there on a regular basis. Apart from considerations concerning ancestors and lineage, this transient behaviour can also be seen as insurance against their insecure existence in the city The exclusion of rural migrants from urban provisions does not apply to those who are persuaded by the state to settle in regions—including cities—that are considered in need of Sinicization by ‘Han’ Chinese. Well-known destinations are the provinces of Yunnan in the south and Tibet and Xinjiang in the west. Here migrants behave more as colonizers and are granted rights upon arrival. Also in this configuration, ethnic identities (Han versus other minorities) are stressed and remain important nodes of orientation in the new urban environment INDIA AND THE PULL OF THE VILLAGE Compared with other parts of the world, South Asia, which largely overlaps with India, has the lowest urbanization levels and since the 1960s has been overtaken by Africa. The relatively low Indian urbanization levels, however, do not mean that Indians are immobile. On the contrary, intra-state mobility in particular has been quite high from the 17th and 18th centuries.22 Many migrants, however, did not settle for good in cities: instead, a pattern of large-scale circular and seasonal migration developed. Migrants flocked to cities, but most of them stayed only temporarily and remained attached to the villages of birth Urban industries did not provide year-round employment, except for a small number of workers, and the business cycle was characterized by unpredictable ups and downs. Moreover, housing in Indian cities was relatively expensive and there were barely any urban institutions which offered shelter from risks such as unemployment, sickness, or death. As in China, many migrants therefore kept their ties with the village of origin, which also prevented fullscale proletarianization. Large numbers settled in the slums, but returned to their villages on a regular basis, especially single men whose families remained in the countryside. Even workers with stable and year-round positions preferred to spread social risks and did not give up their rural ties. The developments within Indian society in the course of the 20th century counter-intuitively facilitated temporary migrations through the spread of cheap and fast transport (buses and trains). In a way one could even speak of seasonal migration from the cities to the rural regions, as many male migrants spent most of their time in the city Although the reluctance to settle permanently is largely explained by the nature of urban institutions and labour markets, culturally specific characteristics also played a role. First of all, we have to realize that India is a pluralistic state in terms of languages and religions, where most people live in linguistically more or less homogeneous states. And although, unlike China, India is a democracy with freedom of migration, people from other states, and sometimes even from other parts of the same state, are often perceived as aliens. The temporariness of rural to urban migration may also have promoted the recruitment of workers on an ethnic basis. Many temporary migrants in cities, both in industry and in the building trade are organized in teams led by a paymaster with a preference for co-ethnic workers; a system that was also common in early modern and 19th-century Western Europe. Moreover, many migrants organize in village clubs or ‘hometown associations’ with mutual insurance schemes that protect members against the risks of unemployment, sickness, and death and also offer credit facilities.24 We should take care, however, not to juxtapose this stress on pluralism and ethnic ties in India (and Africa) against a flourishing civil society and public sphere in which rural migrants are processed to become urbanites. Although there are fundamental differences between various parts of the world when it comes to the content of urban citizenship, such an overly simplistic interpretation neglects various kinds of overarching forms of citizenship that developed in India (and elsewhere) from the 19th century onwards. New pan-religious identities forged ties between various sorts of migrants and urbanites with a similar religious background. Moreover, from the end of the 19th century onwards the public sphere was broadened by the creation of public parks, libraries, cinemas, radio broadcasting, and fairs, as well as by all kind of urban associations AFRICA: TRIBALISM AND MODERNITY The level of urbanization in Africa resembles that of Asia. In both cases the share of the population which lived in cities at the beginning of the 20th century was very low compared to Europe and North America (5–6 per cent), whereas a century later both continents have arrived at a level of around 38 per cent. There are, however, important differences within the two continents with high levels in the south and the north and much lower levels in the east and the middle Although Africa has large cities, like Lagos and Cairo (each with some 10 million inhabitants), they do not figure in the world’s top ten largest cities. Most African cities are ‘primate cities’. This means that within the boundaries of the state there are no other cities with a comparable size nearby and that most rural migrants move to the capital. This pattern is usually explained by the dominant role of the central government in most African states, who spend the bulk of their money on education, health care, and bureaucracy in the capital and as a result are often by far the most important employer The development of urbanization in various parts of Africa was heavily influenced by colonialism and colonial policies. Allowing large-scale migration to cities was thought likely to destabilize African societies and lead to chaos and disruption. Africans living in cities should be segregated, either by creating ‘villes nouvelles’ for Europeans or by separate neighbourhoods. Belgian colonial rule also created strict rules on who was allowed to settle in cities, though the British colonizers in West Africa put up no barriers. In the post-World War II period, Britain and France pursued the modernization paradigm that put high value on urbanization and a stable workforce. This vision of the ideal society was only partly shared by Africans, whose preferences in terms of family life, associations, and the ongoing bonds between the countryside and the city led to a rather different outcome. As in India, most migrants did not break off their contacts with their home villages and thus maintained a resilient rural–urban continuum. To understand this pattern I will focus on the following four factors: (1) cultural preferences; (2) the urban economic structure; (3) the partial nature of the urban citizenship and more specifically the lack of an urban welfare structure; and (4) the social and political construction of identity through notions of ‘autochthony’. After World War II migration to cities was still largely a male affair, but migrants started to stay on longer. Moreover, women and children who used to remain behind in the countryside and tend the farm, increasingly joined the cityward migration. Changing patterns of land tenure, the introduction of cash crops, and individual landownership stimulated the migration of whole families, so that the overrepresentation of males decreased. From the 1970s urbanization gathered speed and increasing numbers of people became urbanites This development, however, did not automatically weaken the strong attachment of the migrants with their villages of origin.27 As in China and India hometown associations are numerous and remittances are more the rule than the exception. One of the reasons to foster ties with the village of origin is the value people attach to landowner-ship and to being buried in their home village. Thus towns and villages remain ‘interrelated social fields’. To what extent people are able to hold on to land and navigate the rural–urban continuum varies greatly within Africa and is subject to change over time. The link with the countryside should therefore not be considered as an essen-tialist feature of Africans, as it is highly dependent on economic, social, and political developments. Compared to European welfare states, urban authorities in African cities had (and still have) little to offer to their inhabitants, whether natives or migrants, in terms of welfare benefits. Although some mining companies experimented with welfare benefits and pensions, these initiatives remained very limited. Social policies that cover these costs are virtually absent, but also other services, like education and health, are often only accessible to those who have money to pay for them. It should therefore not come as a surprise that migrants from the countryside have relied heavily on personal networks of kin and co-ethnics which can offer support in the new environment. Ties with the village or region of origin give access to muchneeded resources such as food and seasonal work. It is therefore expected that migrants with a foothold in the city guide and support kin from their home area. The result has been the emergence of ethnic enclaves in cities that not only support and cushion migrants, but also are the nodal point in the networks that channel people to and from the city.29 Bonds with the countryside are further maintained by remittances in the form of both cash and commodities, which can be seen as a kind of insurance premium safeguarding among other things rights to land. In the absence of general and widely accessible urban institutions, ethnicity, for natives as well as newcomers, has structured urban life and given rise to all kinds of welfare societies, voluntary organizations, and hometown associations, like the Luo in Kampala. Many studies of African cities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, stress the transformative nature of cities, notwithstanding the central role of ethnicity. Not only are hometown associations involved in ‘resocializing the country bumpkins’, but the city confronts migrants also with other forms of identification, like nationalism, religion, and class consciousness. Urban associations cross-cut ethnicity and as they focused on urban neighbourhoods created a new form of social glue. In the absence of vibrant and strong social and political alternatives ethnicity nevertheless remained a powerful way of defining identities and forging social categories.30 As such, it can obstruct the creation of stable democratic institutions. In the struggle over access to urban and rural resources—and also citizenship—politicians have started to emphasize the salience of (rural) origin. Notions of ‘autochthony’ and belonging have led to an obsession with roots and origins in many African countries (like Cameroon) and make collective conceptions of village and region a powerful base for politics. Elite associations in cities that play the ethnic card increasingly crowd out political parties which are more reliant on notions of civil society and the public sphere. This tendency is not restricted to Africa, but can be seen in other continents as well, including Europe and the Americas. The recent populist backlash against migrants, especially Muslims, has proved very successful in countries like France, the Netherlands, Germany, and most Eastern European states, such as Russia. The difference, however, is that in Europe this communitarian and nativist reflex has not led to the exclusion of migrants and their descendants from urban or national institutions and welfare schemes on ethnic, religious, or racial grounds CONCLUSION This chapter shows that the institutional structure of cities largely determines the mode of rural– urban migration. The forms of migration and settlement depend to a large extent on institutional arrangements in various parts of the world. Key questions are: what do cities have to offer to immigrants and how is urban membership defined? This urban profile interacts with rural institutions varying from family systems, legal arrangements, and the level of commercialization to cultural and spiritual practices