ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on empirically testing the notion that hierarchical migration is an important mobility process in developing countries. The notion of the stepwise migration, which implies a migration by stages or steps from a rural environment via lower-order centres to higher-order places, is an interesting concept but one that has been difficult to test empirically because of the paucity of data describing individual moves. For the development of the autonomous and conditioned hierarchies a modification of the Nystuen-Dacey graph theory algorithm is employed. To restructure geographic space and man’s mobility vectors in that space requires an isolation of the major components which affect the aggregate behaviour patterns in that environment. Empirically, evidence of the existence of a stepwise movement of population through the urban hierarchy in Sierra Leone has been demonstrated.
