RURAL TO URBAN MIGRATION:

CONNECTING OPPORTUNITIES,
ADDRESSING GAPS AND
HARNESSING THE POTENTIAL OF
URBANISATION

Ayesha Khan, MBBS, MPH.

Adnan A. Khan, MBBS, MS.
Acknowledgement
st
The 1 Dialogue series on Livelihood and Skill Development was funded by Rural Support Programme
Network (RSPN) with funding through the European Union SUCCESS initiative. The views expressed in
this paper are those of its authors and don’t necessarily reflect the views of either the RSPN or the EU.
Rural-Urban Migration Dialogue Series September 2016

CONTENTS
1. ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................... 1
2. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT ............................................................................................. 1
2.1. Overview of Urbanisation and Agglomeration ................................................................. 1
2.2. The Global and Pakistan Context of Urbanisation .......................................................... 1
2.3. Overview of Urban Poverty ................................................................................................. 2
2.4. Opportunities and Challenges ............................................................................................ 2
2.5. Issues to Address ................................................................................................................. 3
2.6. What is Known and Unknown ............................................................................................ 4
2.7. Knowledge Gaps .................................................................................................................. 5
2.8. Rationale for the Debate ..................................................................................................... 7
3. OBJECTIVES OF THE RURAL-URBAN DIALOGUE SERIES ........................................... 7
4. THE 1ST DIALOGUE ON LIVELIHOOD AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT............................ 7
4.1. Key Set Of Questions Addressed ..................................................................................... 8
4.2. Proceedings And Discussion Points.................................................................................. 8
4.3. Flow Of Debate ..................................................................................................................... 8
4.4. Outcomes .............................................................................................................................. 8
5. DISCUSSION.............................................................................................................................. 10
6. THE WAY FORWARD .............................................................................................................. 10
7. REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 12

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1. ABSTRACT
With half of the world’s population now living in cities, urbanisation is driving human
civilisation and has been the key driver of prosperity in the past two centuries. However,
many new migrants to the city find that their aspirations take years or even decades to
materialise. Worldwide, as in Pakistan, new rural-to-urban migrants often live in squalid
transient settlements with limited opportunities and poor living conditions which they choose
over worse poverty and lack of opportunity that they leave behind. Cities triumph through
agglomerating people and ideas. However information asymmetry about opportunities and
services limits this potential. We used crowd-sourcing in Dhok Hassu, Rawalpindi to map a
population of 200,000. The Akhtar Hameed Khan Development Trust (AHKRC) and
Research and Development Solutions (RADS) aim to facilitate development by connecting
aspects of public and private sector opportunities by fostering an ongoing dialogue on
urbanisation and to test innovations with scientifically robust methodologies. This is the first
in a series of dialogues on urban issues that were identified during research and
conversations in urban slums.
2. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT AGGLOMERATION
2.1. Overview of Urbanisation and Agglomeration Agglomeration means a
After living for nearly all its history in abject and minimally collection or assembly. In
changing poverty, mankind underwent a remarkable urbanisation it refers to
transformation – a 12 fold increase - in prosperity over the the collection of people
past 200 years.1,2 This was also associated with nearly 3 in close proximity to each
times longer lifespans and a 6 fold reduction in extreme other. This allows
poverty.2 Much of this change was driven by specialisation individuals of diverse
of labour leading to more productive jobs,3,4 which backgrounds to
became possible due to urbanisation. Cities allowed complement each other’s
people to complement each other’s skills and talents by skills and to develop
affording physical proximity and numbers through a opportunities (and
process of agglomeration.5 The agglomeration created not therefore higher incomes
just ideas but also markets that absorbed the products of that rely on specialization
their work and built upon them; thus allowing innovations of labour.
to be rewarded and therefore creating prosperity that has
continuously built upon itself. This growth has continued to
attract many of the poorest rural migrants to the cities.
Once in cities, new migrants clustered in urban squatter settlements at the periphery of
cities, where too many live too close to each other, leading to limited quality of life and
problems of health. All too often these new migrants to cities don’t have the specialisation or
skills needed to earn higher incomes, which delays their transition to prosperity by a decade
or more. Since the progress of this migration is uncoordinated and evolutionary, many of
these new individuals remain un- or poorly documented and therefore under-served by
public sector services such as education and health – which further limits their prosperity.
The purpose of this paper is to explore ways to build on natural advantages of cities while
identifying means to mitigate harms of urban slums.
2.2. The Global and Pakistan Context of Urbanisation
Urbanisation is at historically unprecedented levels today, with 82% of North Americans and
40-48% of Asians living in cities (Index Mundi 2014). Pakistan is urbanising at 2.8%
annually. The government of Pakistan states that using older jurisdiction based estimates
38% of its population now lives in cities,6 and is anticipated to increase to 50% by 2025
(Vision 2025). On the other hand, using more recent tax registry, night lights, geo-sensing
data and the Agglomeration Index,7-9 the World Bank estimates that land in urban locales in
Pakistan has increased by more than 3 fold since 1990; although a corresponding estimate

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of changes in populations involved has never been

calculated. Around half of urban dwellers live in a slum.10 AGGLOMERATION
2.3. Overview of Urban Poverty INDEX
Urban poverty is a multifaceted. While rural to urban
The definition of cities is
migration offers poor rural residents the hope of a better
ever evolving and is not
life, the urbanisation process is not smooth. Most new
standardised across
migrants first land in squalid, unhygienic, overpopulated
countries. Agglomeration
and poor urban slums where they encounter multifaceted
Index is an attempt at
poverty due to limited access to employment, sanitation, such standardisation and
healthcare and food; and the anticipated transition to includes: 1) population
prosperity and higher living standards takes years to density (>150/sqkm), 2)
decades to materialise.11-14 During this time they receive the population of a
few government services since, being undocumented, they "large" urban centre
are either not part of government plans or even considered (population of >50,000)
illegal occupiers of government land.15 This exclusion may and 3) travel time to that
be higher in Pakistan land holding by the government is large urban centre.
around 40%, some of the highest levels in the world.10
The burden of crime is also unduly higher upon the poor.
Furthermore, their personal wellbeing and development are constrained by opportunity
costs, lower ability to tolerate risk and a lack of social safety nets such as the extended
families that they left behind in villages.16 Under these circumstances, these migrants rely on
informal social networks to find jobs, learn new skills and to find social support for housing,
education, health services. Many cut back on non-immediate needs such as preventive
health services or longer term investments in their habitat, in order to meet more immediate
demands such as food. In fact the close association of poverty with urban has led many
scientists to erroneously view urban slums as drivers of poverty13,14,2117-19 and fraught with
poor nutrition and health,20-25 rather than as a means to escape even worse rural poverty.15,26
Others have found that solutions to these social problems must be bottom-up/ community
based27 and must include women in the proposed solutions with a more nuanced role for the
government.28-30 Regardless of cause, many of these social factors impose opportunity costs
on migrants (e.g. giving up work to tend to children/ elderly) and penalise specialisation.16
2.4. Opportunities and Challenges
While cities offer potentially higher incomes and better lifestyles, much of these depend on
the newly migrant workers achieving higher levels of productivity. This productivity of new
migrants depends on their connections to markets that include specialised workers, potential
employers and innovators. The process is often slow and fraught with missed opportunities.
Productivity of cities is directly related the size and diversity of their employment markets,31
available human capital (that complement each other), diversity of employers to absorb
skilled employees26 or to break monopsony of a few employers and the mobility of certain
employees, particularly women.32
All too often all of these opportunities happen nearly entirely through the private sector that
caters to the “bottom of the pyramid” markets in urban slums.33 Public sector services are
often not available: either because urban slums are under documented (and therefore
services are provided planned and funded for too few recipients) or considered illegal where
the public sector seeks to evict residents of urban slums. For e.g. at the beginning AHKRC’s
work in Dhok Hassu – an urban slum in Rawalpindi – government officials told the AHKRC
team that the total population was around 70,000, when on mapping, the actual population
came out to be around 195,000. Any services planned by the government would have been
insufficient for 2/3rd of the population.
Another issue is that Pakistan has not had a census since 1998. At the time, government
judicial categories were used to demarcate urban from rural areas. At the time both the
population and area that was urban in Pakistan were considered to be around 35%. In 2015

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area that is urban has increased by 300%,10 it is highly likely that urban population is now
considerably more than 35% that is cited by government planners.
2.5. Issues to Address
Lack of Empowerment is a hallmark of urban poor. They have limited access to
government or elected officials. This limitation is compounded by the fact that the fact that
many urban slum dwellers are mobile with limited time spent in any one home. This curtails
their ability to develop social networks with their neighbours. All of these factors mean that
they can’t or don’t demand sufficient services from the government nor can they hold
government officials accountable for services that are not delivered.
Resource deficit means that poor urban residents who must rely on privately procured
services in absence/ paucity of government services. Since they have limited purchasing
powers, the markets that operate in urban slums are small and sparse, leading to both
insufficient services and an inadequate assortment of choices to select from. This in turn
leads to monopolies/ oligopolies in services and therefore higher costs and poorer quality.
These limitations further impoverish these already poor citizens.
Connectivity is limited for the urban poor. Most Pakistani cities have poor transport options
within or between cities. Nearly all public transport is through small private operators with
little or no public sector run/ sponsored mass transit. Even when there is mass transit, as is
the case of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, its reach is limited and it misses many of the
poorest locales.
In the AHKRC study, lack of easy or affordable transport to other parts of the city was the
commonest reason that prevented residents of Dhok Hassu from seeking opportunities in
the city. Some of those that work in salaried positions in other parts of town described
traveling for up to 2-3 hours a day and spending 10-20% of their incomes to commute for
work. In addition, many of the roads in urban slums are too narrow to allow cars to pass, let
alone park. The lack of a transportation infrastructure is felt most acutely in urban slums.
Given that many urban slums are considered illegal and the fact that many new urban
migrants are transient, few have rights to the land they live on. Since land in cities is
scarce, it is more expensive than in rural areas, making housing in urban slums expensive
for their dwellers. This problem is compounded by the issue of land rights and regulatory
hurdles that make it both difficult to transfer land ownership and to prove it in case of
dispute. Few jurisdictions have computerised land registries and legal documentation is very
costly for many poor slum dwellers – at least in part due to “off books” payment that are
required to move processes. This crisis of housing is exemplified by the fact that not only the
poor but many middle class residents in cities don’t own their own land.10
Urban Planning requires accurate counts of population and of services and resources.
Since many of these areas poorly documented, such accuracy does not exist. For e.g. in
Dhok Hassu, only around a third of the population is officially on government lists. This
under-documentation has far reaching costs. Since people are not documented, they seldom
have voting rights in their place of residence and disproportionately fewer elected
representatives. In the larger scheme, this may even tilt the electoral power balance in
favour of rural areas and richer areas of the city compared to urban slums.
Lack of urban planning most acutely felt in services such as education, health, sanitation
and utilities, which are underfunded and infrastructure such as that for utilities is left
insufficient. For e.g. in Dhok Hassu, AHKRC found that there are 3 government schools and
2 government dispensaries for a population of nearly 200,000. Sometimes the lack of
government services is made up by private initiative. There are 125 healthcare providers and
116 schools that serve the population of Dhok Hassu, however, their quality is uncertain.
Even when government services are present, as is seen for lanes, nearly all of which are
paved and lined by paved drains, the quality is poor. The paved drains are open (to avoid

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clogging of poorly designed drains that often run against the gradient) and it is unclear if they
offer any advantage in preventing sanitation associated infections such as diarrhoea among
children over a more primitive sanitation infrastructure.
As with much of Pakistan, both electricity and water are “load shedded”. Electricity is often
interrupted for 6-10 hours a day and water for over 22-23 hours, if its let through at all and is
of poor quality. The lack of continuous supply of electricity and water imposes costs onto
residents of slums who must pay to access these utilities – either by building private
reservoirs for these such as residential uninterrupted power supply units (UPS) or residential
water reservoirs at great costs, or go without these necessities for long periods of time.
Problems of congestion, of land and housing markets, labour markets, roads and
congestion, basic infrastructure, pollution, disease and crime go beyond the simple metric of
too many people in too little space. The close proximity of people not only agglomerates
opportunity, it also creates problems and limits solutions. Crime for example is much higher
among in urban slums – perhaps due to confluence of poverty, need, easy access and poor
enforcement of laws. Diseases such as diarrhoea, pneumonia, polio are easily transmitted
among closely living residents. Lack of utility infrastructure means that people are affected
by their neighbours’ garbage.
Pakistan faced a number of natural disasters in the past decade that mostly affected rural
areas. On the other hand, climate change mediated weather patterns have brought
increased stress on cities. Overcrowding and poorly designed infrastructure have meant that
many cities such as Karachi and Lahore have been regularly disrupted with monsoon rains
which closed entire sections of the city and were followed by epidemics of sewage related
diseases as rain water mediated mixing of drinking with drain water. Appropriate planning
based on evidence to drive planning decisions will mitigate some of these “predictable”
problems, but will require investments in the ability to track the population and their needs.
Economic motives underlie migration to cities. As discussed, poor and limited job markets
limit the gains that individuals or the country may accrue from such as migration. For these
to be overcome, it is imperative that agglomeration economies including the nuances of
the labour markets (perhaps different for each city), types and diversity of skills needed in
the city, what means exist to build and absorb capacity/ skills, scope of economies of scale,
particularly when providing services to a very large number of closely clustered individuals
are all unanswered questions. Some of the questions that must be asked is that if so many
people live so close to each other and buy many of necessities such as food and utilities
privately, then just provision of these staples – even at very low costs - should provide great
opportunities for businesses; so why aren’t businesses stepping into the opportunity to make
a profit for themselves and providing employment and services to the residents.
Another aspect to consider is the macroeconomic picture at the country and city level. The
types of particular employment that are available in any city vary widely. Karachi has a large
service sector along with some manufacturing. Faisalabad has manufacturing and other
factory level employment. Rawalpindi on the other hand is predominantly
services/administrative sector with a preponderance of government jobs. The nature of these
jobs, the types of skills needed for these and level of difficulty new entrants face to enter
these jobs also vary considerably. Additionally, Pakistan has experienced a net reduction in
the contribution of manufacturing towards GDP,10 making service sector jobs the primary
driver of employment in cities. Since the level of skills required for services is higher than for
basic manufacturing, this situation limits options for low skill migrant workers. The situation is
comparable to that in the Middle East where low skill jobs have diminished and Pakistan
migrant workers to the Middle East have suffered.
2.6. What is Known and Unknown
In 2015-16, the AHKRC (in collaboration with Research and Development Solutions, a
research group), conducted a series of surveys and estimations for Dhok Hassu, a well-

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established urban slum in Rawalpindi. Aspects of these assessments can illustrate some key
issues in urban slums.
Dhok Hassu comprises of 3 union councils and has a population of 194,250 (population
density: 142,000/km2; at par with some of the densest localities in the world. However,
government estimates had suggested a population of around 70,000. Vaccinator records
from UNICEF, WHO and government teams had suggested at least 130-140,000 population
from households with families (excluding households comprising of single men or couples
without children); however, compiling this would have required collating information from the
3 union councils. This had not been done.
Around 47% if households rent and 71% are nuclear families. 41% of women are illiterate
and only 7% of the women work (half of these from their own home). 44% cannot leave
home alone, 51% can only visit a neighbour, 44% can go to a local store, 37% to a health
facility and 28% require getting permission prior to leaving home each time. Only 7% feel
that they can freely go outside without ever asking others for permission.
Residents identified around 125 healthcare providers that they visit, although around half of
these fall outside the geographic limits of Dhok Hassu. Of these 42% are medical doctors
and 40% are either hakims or homeopaths. All but 3 are in the private sector. A few patients
– all government employees – go to nearby large government hospitals. For most part all
residents can access and afford some healthcare, although they dissatisfied with its overall
quality. Most care sought is for medical treatment of ailments, preventive services are rare.
Contraceptive prevalence rate is 23.1% with mostly condoms. Around 25% of providers said
that they currently provide FP services, while 11% provide birthing services. 41% of the
deliveries happen at home, 33% in a government and 26% in a private hospital. Survey
shows 85% vaccination coverage although there are pockets of high vaccine refusals
(usually in neighbourhoods with mostly recent FATA and Afghan migrant) and polio was
identified from environmental samples in 2015.
There are 115 private and two government schools. Most schools are for the primary (<5
grade). Most residents strongly support education for both male and female children.
Parents would prefer to enrol children in the two government schools in the vicinity; however
there is limited space in these. Many residents take their children out of school after primary
or secondary levels due financial constraints. While there is a general aspiration of
connecting education with opportunities, there isn’t yet a manifest preference or even
identification of quality of education.
Crude estimates place unemployment rate in Dhok Hassu at 32%. Amongst those who are
employed, informal employment/ day jobs/ manual labour are the norm and 95% of the jobs
are non-specialised. Consumption data suggests that at least family households fall within
40-80th wealth percentile for Pakistan and total consumption for the entire locality would be
around Rs. 2.1 billion.
Many respondents report facing sanitation issues regularly. 78% homes have toilets
connected with public drains. Nearly all streets are paved and are lined by constructed
drains that are open. Residents report frequent blockages and overflows of these drains.
The city government collects trash from major streets but few smaller streets are serviced or
have local committees to manage them; 36% of homes simply throw their trash out. They
also report that government sanitation workers usually demand off the books payments for
services. Moreover, sewage pipes run parallel to the water pipes, with the possibility of
contamination of water supply. While they understand and describe the lack of sanitation,
they seldom connect this to the very common child diarrhoea: 48% of children have had at
least one diarrhoeal episode in the past 12 months
2.7. Knowledge Gaps
Urban growth has been well-studied in developed settings and with the exception of China
and India is not well understood in most developing country settings including Pakistan.26

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Our proposal seeks to address these missing information gaps on how Productivity transition
of workers, their human capital (education, skills) and the impact of their social and
professional networks (how social or professional networks that attract rural workers to
particular cities, help establish and live, allow capacity growth through knowledge spill
overs), urban employment markets (diversity, level of specialisation, volumes at which they
operate, extent, efficiency and means to which migrants connect with markets), reasons for,
types, patterns and particular reasons for delays in specialisation of urban migrants are
poorly understood in developing countries. Similarly, availability of social services can help
(e.g. family support for work or mobility) or impede productivity (e.g. giving up work to
procure water or healthcare) of workers. These services are often provided by local low-level
entrepreneurs; usually at high costs due to limited/ inefficient service markets,26 since
squatter settlements frequently outpace formal policy and the ability of public sector. By
better understanding of how these trade-offs and factors impact productivity transition can
help devise programmes (market-based, philanthropic or public sector) to accelerate
workers’ transition to higher wages and improved lifestyle - leading to economically stronger
cities like in developed countries.
South Asia’s urban population including Pakistan is poised to grow by almost 250 million
people by 2030.10 If recent history is any guide, this increase in rural to urban migration can
propel the region toward greater economic growth, prosperity and liveability in its cities, and
join the ranks of richer countries. Urbanization thus presents countries an opportunity to
transform their economies through agglomeration of both people, skills and enterprises in its
cities, improve productivity and spur job creation, especially in manufacturing and services.
According to official government estimations (the last census in Pakistan was in 1998)
approximately one-third of the 188 million people live in urban areas. However, using the
Agglomeration Index, an alternative measure of urban concentration, the share of Pakistan’s
population living in urban areas was estimated to be 55% in 2010 and is rapidly increasing.10
By 2025, Lahore's population, currently about seven million, will exceed 10 million and
Karachi's is between 20 and 25 million, up from its current 13 million. But how can the
country cope with such migration levels? The inadequate provision of shelter to the urban
poor continues to be one of Pakistan's most immediate problems followed by immense
pressure on basic urban services including clean water, energy, education, health and
pollution.34
In the long term, successful urbanization drives prosperity nationwide, including in rural
areas as cities become engines of economic and social development. But these positive
trends can be undermined by chaotic urban population growth and absence of planned
urban management by policy makers and development practitioners. One significant
symptom of unplanned urbanization is reflected in the widespread existence of urban slums
that contrast with sprawl at the peripheries of major cities (if not within them), while inner
cities are plagued by decay, overcrowding and neglect. In Pakistan 1 in 8 urban dweller i.e.
13% lives below the national poverty line and urbanization is hidden and messy1.
For policy makers and urban practitioners some urgent questions and challenges to be
addressed are: What do cities need to do to meet the demands of their growing populations
and to manage transformation? How can we create an effective and functioning system of
cities? How can national and local policy makers and NGOs working in rural areas
“collaborate” to address these challenges in a timely and systematic manner if they are to
alleviate congestion pressures for better performance of cities and, in so doing, create an
environment conducive to recognizing the potential of people in achieving prosperity. How
can models of improvements in urban governance and finance—in empowerment, in
resources, and in accountability systems be piloted, shared, lessons learned and scaled up
to address the existing gaps in urban management and planning.

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2.8. Rationale for the Debate

Urbanisation and urban poverty have not received as much attention as rural poverty and
rural issues in Pakistan. With growing urbanisation and the fact that majority of population
will soon live in a city – if that hasn’t already happened. We sought to address some of the
key issues faced by rural to urban migrants in their quest for a better life. The idea is to
initiate a sustained dialogue that brings together experts, implementers, academics and
communities in identifying problems of urban living.
3. OBJECTIVES OF THE RURAL-URBAN DIALOGUE SERIES
The goal of this series of dialogues is to enable a continuous debate among community
residents, experts, implementers, researchers and academia on key issues of Livelihood,
Education, Housing (including sanitation) and Health – the four main concerns of residents
of urban slums from the AHKRC-RADS Survey 2015 – to highlight and discuss salient policy
gaps and actions needed under four main domains of Urban Governance and Performance,
Finance and Resources, Planning and Connectivity, and Empowerment of communities to
facilitate rural-urban migration as a driver of prosperity and liveability of cities.
The seminar series will explore the existing knowledge and the growing phenomenon of
migration within Pakistan, document the missed opportunities and challenges in productivity
transition and access to resources for rural to urban migrants along with the role of
government, NGOs and informal networks in providing a conducive environment that
impacts livelihood, education, housing and health. The seminar series will produce a set of
policy briefs/working papers with recommendations for policy makers and urban practitioners
to test out innovations and best practices in low income urban settlements.
4. THE 1ST DIALOGUE ON LIVELIHOOD AND SKILL DEVELOPMENT
Conducted on 8th September 2016, the first dialogue focused on livelihood and skill
development, asking the questions how rural-urban management and planning can be
channelled to meet the need of specialised economies in cities, the transition of migrants
into cities, and; skill development based on their pre-existing human capital (education,
other skills), social networks (that help find jobs and provide social safety nets), available
savings, and the employment markets (formal/ informal, diversity of employers, level of
specialisation, volumes, cost advantages to producers and consumer) they land into. These
processes are not well understood or documented in developing countries including
Pakistan. Understanding these better would help inform and connect programs (market
based, philanthropic or public sector) to accelerate the productivity and social transition of
migrants to the cities in an organized manner.
Rural to urban migrants often have low skill levels initially. They land in urban employment
markets in Pakistan that have insufficient volumes to absorb unskilled workers as well as
limited ability to reward skills.16 Under these circumstances, these migrants rely on informal
social networks to find jobs, learn new skills and to find social support for housing,
education, health etc. (opportunity costs, risk sharing and negotiation). At the squatter
settlement level lack of basic amenities and municipal services, indifference by city
administrators to urban slum dwellers, criminal activity, and illegal land or housing
occupations - constrain their potential to self-develop and thus leaving the provision of local
services to level entrepreneurs, often haphazardly and at higher costs.26

Development experts working in rural settings and urban practitioners discussed successful
models of livelihood generation, skills development, market needs, and connectivity to
resources and opportunities. By identifying information, strategies and programs that
accelerate livelihood and economic opportunities for migrants the seminar contributed to the
growth agenda of the government of Pakistan (Vision 2025) and the urbanisation-
development nexus at large.

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4.1. Key Set Of Questions Addressed

 What jobs/ work are they leaving behind in rural areas? What (low skilled) work/ jobs
are available in the cities that are they are moving to: what kind is common to all
cities and what is distinct for individual cities? How can we identify and connect these
employers with potential employees.
 What connections can be used to bridge rural economy to city distribution?
Enhancing the Supply chains – can people’s collective social mobilization i.e. LSOs
serve as the middle man?
 What networks do these migrants currently land into that help them find employment.
Can these be used to identify new migrants earlier and to absorb them? Any role of
an NGO or firm for maintaining this service or employment board?
 How can we effectively and efficiently build skills - Can we anticipate what skills will
be needed in cities for migrants and start training before they move. Skill building
may be done by the government, NGOs (RSPs, PPAF) of the private sector. In cities,
can we train migrants for semi-skilled jobs in Middle East?
 What options are available for women who have low mobility- Most home-based work
like stitching is low paying. What options are available for building skills and higher
paying jobs
 What options are available for women who have higher mobility and education- . Can
they be trained and connected to higher paying jobs. Which employers. Malls?
Shops? Offices?
4.2. Proceedings And Discussion Points

In light of the questions the participants elaborated on the following points:

1. Addressing the issue of limited job availabilities and absorption capacity of cities to
adjust these low skilled rural migrants;
2. Exploring what attracts migrants to cities and what can be some livelihood or skill
development programs in rural areas;
3. Identifying connections between the rural and urban settings;
4. Identifying skill enhancement and capacity building strategies for migrants in cities;
5. Focusing on enhancing mobility of women migrants.
4.3. Flow Of Debate

For convenience of the reader the discussion points included these four themes:
1. Contextual knowledge and driving factors behind migration and relevant gaps in
knowledge
2. Current initiatives taken by private sector, government and NGOs in Pakistan to
improve opportunities for rural residents as well as to allow effective transitioning of
urban migrants
3. Identification of salient regional or international lessons to explore policy options for
the government.
4. Connections new migrants can create to develop safety nets in urban settings
4.4. Outcomes

The dialogue started with an overview of the reasons of migration, such as the inability of
rural areas to provide adequate livelihoods, decline in agricultural resources and the lure of
better wages, work conditions and opportunities for education and social mobility in urban
areas. It was striking that many discussants – most of whom work in rural development -
viewed cities as the antithesis of villages and some felt that there should be work on making
rural areas more attractive to reduce urban migration, with little appreciation of the
agglomeration and benevolent role of cities.

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Discussants felt that migration means a change in place and population that is largely driven
by unemployment. Economic opportunities are not generating jobs for rural population
pushing to cities, which have more opportunities to provide a “pull” for migration. Some
economic pressures on Pakistani villages were mitigated by the availability of low skills
employment in the Middle East – although that is now diminishing with the sharp decline in
oil prices. This very rapid urbanisation has placed tremendous pressures on cites. For e.g.
Karachi has expanded to around 24 million population and is a major destination for internal
migration. 45% of migrants in Karachi live in shanty towns with no ownership, leadership or
reforms in policies, while adding to the security issues and unorganized urbanization of the
city leading to problems regarding housing, employment and crime.
On a social level, tenant farmers are shifting to the urban areas leading to a breakdown of
the age old caste system which discussants felt had provided social protections, moral
guidance and social order to rural societies. This migration leaves the elders behind and
makes them dispensable; while fostering a sense of dislocation as new migrants seek out
networks beyond their castes.
Despite their ambitions for a better life and work, many new rural to urban migrants find that
well-paying jobs are difficult to find in the cities. They lack skills needed for many of the
specialised jobs or the networks to find the jobs that exist and struggle to embrace new
professional norms of a formal economy. These can be eased by addressing the needs of
men, youth and women to manage their transition to cities by building networks and
facilitating the migrants by giving them a sense of location. Discussants cited examples of
Bulgaria where the state allocated formal and informal land for the gypsy minorities; or of
China that tied employment, residency and privileges to manage migration. All felt that
NGOs, private sector and the government cannot achieve their goals of reducing poverty,
education, gender and equality, clean water and facilitation, responsible consumption, peace
and justice if migration and urban development are not dealt with.
The discussants felt strongly that there is a need for difficult yet appropriate policy reforms to
reduce rural migration and to facilitate the agglomeration economies, thus enabling the
tremendous national potential. They spoke of improving the living conditions and livelihoods
in rural areas, empowering local governments through guidance from higher tiers and to
adapt forward looking planning approaches to guide expansion. For that purpose, urban
growth projections need to be frequently updated to better respond to longer term needs and
safeguard space for future development.
There discussants recognised a lack of policy dialogue (hence this dialogue is welcome) on
the phenomena and that migration to either cities or the Middle East has been spontaneous
and unplanned. Hence, there is a need to incorporate rural to urban migration in the national
policy framework, to increase choices for youth with vocational trainings, conduct research to
distinguish different kinds of migrations taking place in the country and brainstorm on local
master plans that diversify resources and opportunities beyond those provided by the
government. There is a need to reach to every household to bring out their unique potential
and NGOs need to tap that potential to identify their main obstacles and needs which drives
migration. It was identified that income generation may be through jobs or entrepreneurship,
although it is unclear what entrepreneurship would new migrants engage in.
NRSP presented a solution oriented approach that it is already using in its various
development projects. This is involves a needs assessment to verify issues that lead to
migration in particular rural areas and covers four domains. Firstly, migration occurs in
search of better employment opportunities and there is no way to stop households from
moving when faced with dire rural poverty. Development programmes can build capacity of
migrating individuals through vocational training sessions and workshops so that they have
skills for higher income work when they arrive in cities. Secondly, education/ awareness is a
major driver of migration. Absent quality education the NRSP brings local knowledge to
communities through social mobilisation. Thirdly, migration takes place to seek access to

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basic services. NRSP’s WISE (Water, Immunization, Sanitation, and Education) makes rural
communities aware about these issues and may also help them migrate to the urban areas
in the future. Fourthly, migration also takes place due to crime and disputes over land where
many poor villagers have little recourse and they escape this reality by moving to cities. For
this purpose NRSP has organised social mobilisation campaigns in urban areas which help
rural residents connect to urban areas and form networks that can develop formal
relationships between urban and rural areas.
Logistical issues such as the lack of an accurate and consensus definition of what comprises
an urban location, the lack of a national census since 1998 and its attendant problem of
measuring what proportion of Pakistani population has urbanised, practical means
measuring urbanisation in real time as it happens, engaging city governments and
communities in solutions were also highlighted.
5. DISCUSSION
The session clearly shows that the issues of urbanisation and rural to urban migration are
well recognised. However, many of the experts frame the issue in terms a loss to rural areas
and a gain urban problems – i.e. loss framing – rather than as a spontaneous social process
that is responding to the needs of the people by finding jobs and facilities to the very poor –
i.e. gain framing. The discussants accurately identified the many drivers of urbanisation in
Pakistan and the problems that are caused by it, including some suggestions for remedies
for these problems. Very conspicuously absent in the dialogue was a discussion of urban
economies and their scale or variations, labour markets (and their scale and variations) and
social or skills adaptation that is needed for new migrants to succeed in cities and the
networks in the city that new migrants use to land in a new city, find residence, livelihood
and eventually opportunities to build their skills.
6. THE WAY FORWARD
This is the first dialogue in the series to understand rural to urban migration and urbanisation
in Pakistani cities. It provided an opportunity for concerned stakeholders to confer with each
other and allowed government, civil society and NGOs to meet and get to know each other.
Based on lessons from this discussion and from around the world, we propose the following:
1. The AHKRC will continue to provide a forum for such national dialogue and will expand
the stakeholders invited to include members of communities from urban slums so that
they directly participate in identifying and solving their own problems. In this regards, the
newly elected Chairmen of District Councils would be ideal candidates, along with
members from the local CSOs.
2. There is a need to document the work that has been done by NGOs and government to
either build capacity of migrant workers or to provide other social safety nets or
protections, while recognising the context in which this implementation happened and to
develop guidance that can be used to replicate or scale up these lessons.
3. The social process of how new migrants arrive and adapt to cities is relatively unknown.
There is need for social and anthropological research to understand how new migrants
to cities land, what networks they form and use to find jobs and resources, how these
evolve over time and with their changing needs, what frustrations they encounter in cities
and what solutions they find to overcome these and to generally document the process it
takes for new migrants (including their families) to become citizens.
4. The content of the dialogue must be driven by needs that are identified in the
communities – preferably using participatory approaches. For now we proposed income/
employment, education of children, health and sanitation as the main issues that were
identified during our community engagement in Rawalpindi. Other issues that have been
relevant in other cities and contexts in Pakistan include: land rights, crime, transport etc.

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5. Economies of urban slum are not well understood. Supply and demand for at least some
services and commodities happens and yet not much is known about these, if there are
unrealised economies of scale that can exploited to improve access to necessary
services and staples and if these “bottom of the pyramid” economies can generate and
sustain jobs in these communities.
6. Labour markets of cities and urban slums need to be better studied to identify ways to
build skills of workers, find cost effective and locally responsive solutions to build skills,
to develop formal and informal networks (e.g. middlemen) to connect potential
employees to potential employers and to manage skills development. If this can be done
economically while monetising the process, it would be sustainable and better adapted to
local needs.
7. Economies and labour markets are different for different cities in Pakistan. These
nuances should be understood and addressed in programmes.
8. Land and residential rights in urban squatter settlements is a worldwide issue that is
equally relevant to Pakistan. While some work has been done in Karachi, there is a need
to understand and expand these lessons to other cities in Pakistan.
9. Local governments have been less than ideally engaged in solving issues of urban
slums. For this to happen the following must happen:
a. A better and more accurate definition of what constitutes a city must be agreed
upon. It is very clear that the old jurisdiction based definition needs to be
upgraded to include the concepts of agglomeration, density, facilities, etc.
b. Better accountability of public sector services should be encouraged. A natural
opportunity is the recent local body election where there is one Chairman and
one Deputy Chairman for each Union Council. These can be the liaison between
government officials responsible for services and the communities for whom the
services are intended.
c. A national census to accurately measure the population and its distribution
between urban and rural locations is needed. Furthermore, these figures will
have to be revised periodically with scientifically robust estimation techniques so
that resources and their allocation can be timely, accurate and equitable.
d. Better thinking of taxation and its use needs to be debated. Urban slums are
likely to produce fewer direct and land related taxes than more affluent localities
in the cities. However, affluent dwellers accrue many indirect benefits from urban
slums (cheap labour and products, a civil and peaceful city) that more than offset
this disadvantage. Such considerations should discussed openly.
e. More funding autonomy and accountability at the local level than is currently
happening.
10. While it is easier to ask the government to deliver all that is needed, the dilemma of most
developing countries is that their governments aren’t as responsive to the needs of the
people as they should be. Under the circumstances, finding commercial solutions that
deliver local solutions for services and commodities should be explored.
11. As with most developmental work, not all ideas to improve lives of urban poor will work
as intended. There is a need to measure and document new ideas (pilots) and their
implementation context. In this regards urban laboratories that bring implementers,
NGOs, government, academics and other researchers have a core role to play.

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