ABSTRACT
No country has moved to a high level of economic development unaccompanied by a redistribution of its population to urban areas. The concentration of labour force in cities has been a fundamental and necessary part of modern patterns of development, and migration to towns and cities has been one of the integral components of this transformation. Yet the current debate on migration and development has not incorporated this redistribution of population into its deliberations. Rather, the debate has focused on the minority of people who move: those who have crossed an international border and who are estimated to represent about 3 per cent of the world’s population, or some 191 million people in 2005 (United Nations 2006a). The majority of books on migration today focus only on the international movements of population. The arguably leading organization that deals with migration, the International Organization for Migration, looks primarily at international migration, and currently the leading forum where migration and development are discussed, the Global Forum on Migration and Development, deals only with international migration.
