ABSTRACT
The rate of rural-urban migration is already declining in most developing countries but not yet in Africa. The causes for migration cannot only be seen in the rural-urban income and living standard differentials. Rural areas have been negatively affected by the division of labour in the world system since colonial times but even more so in the last few decades. On the other hand this world-wide division of labour has stimulated migration by creating connections between cities and countryside. Market forces have penetrated the local economies and weakened them by mechanising agriculture, concentrating land, and competing with an overwhelming power with industrial products against handicraft. Rural areas became more and more marginalized, the hinterland, the periphery. But this same process tied the rural areas more and more to the national and international urban centres. The ever deeper but very uneven 'integration' of the countryside into the national division of labour created an effective potential for migration (Feldbauer and Parnreiter 1997).
