Migrancy and Urbanization in the Union of South Africa

Abstract

There have been many movements of population in human history, and almost as many reasons for them. But all of them have one feature in common. They arose as a result of a change either in the external circumstances confronting a society or a section of it, or in the reactions of the people to their external circumstances. Migrations have always involved preferences, and occurred when preferences have changed. Perhaps the reception area has improved. Perhaps the other area has worsened. Perhaps both processes have occurred simultaneously. Whatever the causes of the change in relative preferences, whether it be the development of racial, political, or religious persecution, the occurrence or threat of war, the discovery of new continents or new sources of wealth, the effect of new medical techniques in enabling the opening up of hitherto uninhabitable countries, or the decline in fertility in the occupied area, it is the change that precedes the movement.