Unveiling the Role of Rural Social Networks in Facilitating Rural-Urban Migration and the Survival of Self-Employed Youth in Iringa Municipality, Tanzania
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Date
2020-12-17
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Tanzania Journal for Population studies and Development
Abstract
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Youth unemployment is a global challenge but more severe among
developing countries such as Tanzania. In addressing the challenge,
rural youth resort to migrating to urban areas in search of perceived
vast economic opportunities. This paper explores how rural social
networks facilitate youth rural-urban migration and migrants' survival
in Iringa Municipality. It shows that cooperative values manifested in
day to day socio-economic relations among village dwellers nurture
long term social networks that are the potential to facilitate youth
migration and their survival in urban areas. The paper unveils how
earlier migrants support the newcomers to join them and access
economic opportunities. They provide fare to travel, hosting assistance
and connect them to urban income generation opportunities. As a
survival strategy, youth migrants use their rural social relations to form
economic groups to work together, exchange information about
alternative sources of incomes as well as helping each other when faced
with socio-economic crises. However, despite such accrued rural social
networks benefits, some youth migrants fail to meet their expectations
given urban life challenges as they earn insufficient income to cater for
their basic needs. To avoid such urban vulnerability, the paper
proposes some suggestions. Before migration, rural youth need to be
informed to make proper decisions based on the correct information,
and they should work hard while in the urban area to cope with a new
working environment.
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Keywords
Rural social network, youth, rural-urban migration