The majority of urban migrants come by themselves or with only their immediate family (spouse and children). This has led to the fragmentation of families and a shift in the composition of the traditional family unit. Even people living in remote rural areas now usually have some family or community linkages to the city.

Isolated from extended family, new arrivals to urban areas lack an immediate support network, socially or economically. Single parent families are more common. Children are more often left alone because grandparents, aunts and uncles are not around while parents are working.

Socialising with new and unknown local influences can put both children and adults at increased risk of harm. Urban youth in particular can be exposed to social groups that exploit their poverty and frustration. Criminal gangs or militant groups often recruit from this vast pool of disenfranchised urban youth.

The Gender Dimension

Migrant women need particular protection from the alienation that urban living can bring.

At first glance, life in the city brings many benefits to women that traditional rural lifestyles have not offered. They can be economically independent of their families, whether married or unmarried.

Young women in Asia are often employed in the garment industry, fish processing and other factories. Even though they earn minimum wages and the industries are not well represented by labour laws, it can still be empowering.

But there is another side to the urban coin. Lack of monitoring of female-dominated workforces leaves girls and women vulnerable to sexual abuse, unfair dismissal and even trafficking.

Women from slum areas are more likely to marry early and have more children than women in the rest of the city. Without the extended family of rural settings, women are then challenged to capacity on their ability to care for their children and earn money at the same time. Lack of access to maternal and child health information and care, as well as family planning resources, can intensify the challenges.

Alternative communities

Traditional rural communities form geographically, in clusters of extended family that eventually grow to become villages. With land available, proximity to neighbours is a choice rather than a necessity.

In urban settings, however, people settle wherever they can find and afford shelter. In slum communities, often the only element they will have in common with their new neighbours is the urgent need for income.

Development in urban settings is still based on community support, but to be effective it must reach out to alternative communities, who may have work, beliefs, cultural practices or causes in common rather than geography.

Finding these alternative communities should not exclude children’s communities. Outside school, children gather together as child labourers, rubbish scavengers or beggars. All of these groups can benefit from targeted programmes including informal education, mobile health clinics, drop-in centres or vocational training.