Urban Migration and Employment Security Issues in the Informal Sector, Colombo District

Abstract

Migration to urban areas significantly effect on population growth of urban area's in Colombo District. In Sri Lankan context, people can move to place to place without any barriers of constitution or other restrictions. Most low educated migrants enter to the informal sector employments due to easy accessing into the informal sector. Informal sector is the largest sector of the economy in most developing countries. Although employments in the informal economy play a vital role in Sri Lankan urban economy like other developing economies, most migrants have to face employment issues. However in local context researchers have not addressed this issue adequately Therefore, this study tried to examine socioeconomic aspects of urban migrants' employments in the urban informal sector with respect to their livelihoods, working conditions and wages. Qualitative data was collected from randomly selected 40 migrant households through in-depth interviews and content analysis was applied to analysis of the data. Findings reveal that the youngest aged household heads are decided to migrate to increase opportunities of earning for more comfortable lives. Migrants' poor skills and low level of education have been leaded to low wages and income discriminations. Although, migrants have spent money to migrate to urban locations, most of them were unable to achieve their objectives since increasing the urban population and employment insecurity of informal sector. Conclusion made is that urban ward migration induced to increase employment issues and negative implications on themselves and the urban communities.