ABSTRACT
Social mobility is the most potent force in labour redistribution. Irrespective of local employment opportunities, most young people from rural areas of Tunisia aspire to live in the city. They have come to view village life as drab, rejecting the mores and lifestyle of their forebears. Urban residence, albeit in a squalid gourbiville, has become socially more prestigious than village life. The penetration of modern transport networks even to the remotest regions has facilitated rural-urban migration, while the presence of relatives and former villagers in squatter settlements around the large cities has promoted an atmosphere conducive to further in-migration. As long as spatial mobility remains the main way by which social mobility may be achieved, massive labour redistribution from the village to the city is likely to persist.
