Urbanisation Is Sea
SE1101E Group Essay
Rural-Urban migration, or "urbanization", has led to a better life for a majority of Southeast Asians. To what extent is this true? Discuss your answer using examples from at least three different Southeast Asian societies to illustrate your points.
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Introduction
For the longest time, Singaporeans lived in a relative urban oasis - coined, praised and awarded as the ‘Garden City’. Even so, in the last 2 years, Singaporeans have experienced the stress of continued urbanization, created primarily through migration. This stress has been manifested physically as inadequate infrastructure, socially as rising xenophobia and politically as rising discontentment, leading to the long-ruling People’s Action Party to face its worst electoral performance since independence in 1965. It is this backdrop that propelled our group to comparatively examine the urbanization experiences of three of Southeast Asia’s largest countries, and evaluate the outcomes.
Firstly and most importantly, it is important to delineate the two key terms - “rural-urban migration” and “urbanization”. While “rural-urban migration” is a subset of “urbanization”, urbanization as a process is far more encompassing, as Terry McGee has noted to include the expansion and encroachment of urban regions into formerly rural areas through land-use conversion practices. For the scope of this essay, we will limit our arguments to the process of “rural-urban migration”.
The process of migration is simply defined by Zelinsky as “a permanent or semipermanent change of residence”. Petersen offers a sociological perspective, defining migration as “a spatial transfer from one social unit or neighbourhood to another”. Extending these, rural-urban migration can be broadly defined as the movement of people from rural home locations to urban locations, which results in socio-economic impacts for “both the origin and destination societies”. This includes circulatory migration, where
Rural-Urban migration, or "urbanization", has led to a better life for a majority of Southeast Asians. To what extent is this true? Discuss your answer using examples from at least three different Southeast Asian societies to illustrate your points.
____
Introduction
For the longest time, Singaporeans lived in a relative urban oasis - coined, praised and awarded as the ‘Garden City’. Even so, in the last 2 years, Singaporeans have experienced the stress of continued urbanization, created primarily through migration. This stress has been manifested physically as inadequate infrastructure, socially as rising xenophobia and politically as rising discontentment, leading to the long-ruling People’s Action Party to face its worst electoral performance since independence in 1965. It is this backdrop that propelled our group to comparatively examine the urbanization experiences of three of Southeast Asia’s largest countries, and evaluate the outcomes.
Firstly and most importantly, it is important to delineate the two key terms - “rural-urban migration” and “urbanization”. While “rural-urban migration” is a subset of “urbanization”, urbanization as a process is far more encompassing, as Terry McGee has noted to include the expansion and encroachment of urban regions into formerly rural areas through land-use conversion practices. For the scope of this essay, we will limit our arguments to the process of “rural-urban migration”.
The process of migration is simply defined by Zelinsky as “a permanent or semipermanent change of residence”. Petersen offers a sociological perspective, defining migration as “a spatial transfer from one social unit or neighbourhood to another”. Extending these, rural-urban migration can be broadly defined as the movement of people from rural home locations to urban locations, which results in socio-economic impacts for “both the origin and destination societies”. This includes circulatory migration, where