Contenu du sommaire : Migrations et urbanisation - Migrations and cities.

Rural-urban shift in Ivory coast People of traditional mobility, and main ethnic group of Ivory Coast, the Baoule play an increasing part in the urbanization of their country. Whereas rural emigration has been standing, departure to towns, mainly among men, have become repeated. Circumstancial and structural causes mingle to account for this trend and its limits. Even the emigration inside the rural sphere tends to foster urbanization.

From international to national migration: São Paulo. São Paulo is one of the States of Brazil that has presented one of the highest population growth rates, not only in what concerns natural growth rates but due to its development it has attracted national migrants after having received many foreigners. In 1920 one fifth of the total population of the State of São Paulo was compensed by foreigners, fifty per cent of which beeing Italians. Nowadays the participation of foreign population is only about 2,57% and the percentage of national migrants has raised to 30%, of which are important those proceeding from the States of Minas Gerais, Bahia, Parana and Pernambuco, who sum up to 72.3% of the total of national migrants in the State of São Paulo according to the 1980 Census. In its beginning, international and national migration went mainly to the countryside. Nowadays it assumes an important role in the migration to urban centers ans specially to the area of Great São Paulo and São Paulo city. With the spreading of the capitalist mode of production in Brazil the focus of accumulation is mainly situated in the Southeast in which the State of São Paulo assumes the commanding role in the production of brazilian space. In spite of the economic difficulties that the country undergoes in the last years, with its serious consequences in the level of employment and standard of living of the population, migration movements to the State of São Paulo continue very intensively and especially to the cities that form the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo and to its capital - the city of São Paulo.

Brussels: the slackening of counter-urbanization The process of urbanization - suburbanization has been followed in the Brussels area during the seventies by a very intensive counter-urbanization. The migration flow is positive in the rural districts for the 25-40 years old households with their children under 10 years. Around 20 years, on the contrary, migration to town is more important, as it is for unmarried people. Since 1979 a slackening of the urban to rural shift is observed, and seems to be linked with the economic crisis.

Rouen: spatial extension and quantitative slackening of counter-urbanization Central Pays de Caux (cantons of Fauville and Yvetot) is very representative of the inversion of population growth at the expense of towns and to the benefit of country, which occurred in France during the decade 1970-1980. Because demographic rural growth is basically the result of a positive migratory balance, the analysis of migrations is particularly instructive. The first stage of the study is a systemic exploratory model in which immigration mainly consists in «rurbanisation» (counterurbanisation) from large cities, in return of adults born in country and in population coming from "deep Caux" (the more rural and urban-distant part of Caux), while emigration is essentially made up of young people. Two communes (Allouville-Bellefosse and Alvimare) have been selected for an analysis of migrations based on several sources: a special survey (a quarter of the households), the study of election file and planning permission file. The nature of migrants is first investigated (where are they coming from? where are they going to?, what are their age structure and occupations?) before the analysis of their motivations. Considering the results r of surveys, some premises of the model must be challenged. Counterurbanisation from Rouen is quite negligible and migration from "deep Caux" has been strongly reduced recently. Three main immigration shifts may be observed: The settling of workers coming from Yvetot and small industrial towns in the neighbouring Seine valley and more recently from Le Havre, because of cheap building land for sale in housing estates; a return of adults born in country (expected in the model, but less important than the first flow) which are settling preferably outside the housing estates, particularly the "white collars"; at last the coming of tertiary population mainly employed in services induced in villages by the population growth. Emigrants are mainly the young less than 25 years old who are leaving considering the lack of cheap rental houses in rural space, but also the elderly, because of the lack of amenities in scattered hamlets. The paper ends with an interrogation on prospects of population growth in suburban rural spaces. It seems that paradoxically the movement is quantitatively and globally slowing down, but carries on its spatial extension.

Intra-urban residential migrations in le Havre and Rouen, Among the 49.650.000 inhabitants living within the French boundaries in 1968 and considering the number of deaths which occurred in the meantime, a little more than 21 million inhabitants (i.e. 42.5 % out of the total population) were no longer living in the same place in 1975. The study of migration levels between communes reveals that only 13 million have moved to another commune and that out of this number 3.7 million have moved within the same urban area: therfore, during these 7 years, 8 million (i.e. more than 16 % of the 1968 census) have moved within the commune where they had been registered at the beginning of the inter-censal period. In the very communes belonging to urban areas which count more than 100.000 inhabitants this proportion nearly reaches 20 % of the 1968 census that is to say 40 % of the national migration. A percentage which should not be underestimated as far as residential migrations are concerned; now, before the study of the 1975 census covering the 1968-1975 period, it was almost impossible — at least in France — to analyse these migrations always excepting inquiries which were inevitably punctual or the studying of non-specific data. This period was the first one which it became possible to measure these migrations thoroughly; indeed it shows that in the city of Le Havre more than 30 % of the 1968 residents have moved within the limits of the same commune when less than 50 % had not moved at all, seven years later. For the 1975-1982 period, the proportion of intra-urban residential migrants falls slightly, but hardly more than 40 % have not moved at all. For either one of these inter-censal periods, intra-urban migrations have altered the population of the neighbourhoods much more than extra-urban migrations have done it. In Rouen, on account of a different spatial distribution of the urban area and because of its high levels of migration, intra-urban migrations are much more reduced but still, non-migrants are comparatively far less numerous : less than 40 % for the single city of Rouen 43 % for the surrounding communes, between 1968 and 1975. The enumeration of the births which occurred during the inter-censal period — a few of them occurring before the residential migration of the family — the enumeration of the deaths, the reconstitution of the original population: these are some of the restraining statistics which should be overcome at first. Then one should go beyond the literal interpretation of the migration trends, (though it may reveal wide variations) and address to a qualitative study of the migrations: unfortunately when the geographer gets down to the neighbourhoods of the city, the data issued from the census are not easily available which undermines the feasibility of such an inquiry; but still, it would be very interesting to investigate the neighbourhoods where out-migration and in-migration take place so as to determine the role of these migrations upon the observed mutations. Nevertheless, it is possible to determine some of the characteristics of these migrations (their age, their birth and growth rates and when statistics are sufficient, their social status) and to highlight their distinctive features when compared to other categories of migrations. Here we are confronted to an unexplored field of investigation; but still it opens new fields of investigation into the type of residence acquired and into the different processes related to spatial developments in urban areas.