ABSTRACT
With generally rapid population growth and insuffi cient new jobs, developing countries are facing a huge employment problem. Because labor is the main asset that poor people have, creating opportunities for them to use this asset productively is the main instrument for poverty reduction. It is no surprise, then, that providing employment opportunities in remunerative activities, elevating the skill level the labor force, and
pacing migration between rural origins and urban destinations to avoid the expansion of urban slums are major development issues. In this chapter, we fi rst look at the logic of employment in the formal and informal sectors. We then look at two bodies of theory that aim to explain why people migrate: one when the decision to migrate is taken at the individual level, the other when it is taken at the household level. We consider international migration and look at its impact on the communities and countries from which migrants come, as well as on the receiving countries.
