Spatial clustering and urban settings of rural migrants in Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

In 2000, a demographic survey of households in selected nuclear villages was conducted in the rural Nang Rong district, northeastern Thailand. As part of a longitudinal study of social and environmental change, a migrant follow-up was conducted that tracked and surveyed adults from 22 survey villages who had out-migrated to Bangkok, Thailand, Korat, Buriram, and the Eastern Seaboard. Global positioning system (GPS) locations for 1022 migrants from the Nang Rong district, who settled in Bangkok, were collected and linked to the demographic surveys. Using these locations, and linking to urban migrant and rural household surveys, we report on the spatial pattern of migrants and their urban settings through remote sensing and statistical analyses. The spatial patterns of migrants' locations in Bangkok are examined using nearest neighbour analysis to determine whether migrants live in spatial clusters organized by economic activity, demographic characteristics, or rural village residence patterns. Neighbourhood environments of migrants' locations are characterized using remotely sensed imagery with an emphasis on the amount of impervious cover in spatially prescribed neighbourhoods that surround migrants' locations. The results show that the spatial clustering of migrants was significant for 12 of the 22 study villages, and the levels of spatial clustering were most associated with education and occupation variables. The neighbourhood environments of the migrants, indicated by the percentage of impervious cover and the mean impervious patch size, were modelled as a function of demographic and geographic variables, suggesting scale dependence of the findings.

Keywords:

• Rural-urban migration
• Nearest neighbour analysis
• Percent impervious
• Remote sensing
• Neighbourhood environment
• Bangkok
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

The research reported here has been supported in a variety of ways, including grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (RO1-HD33570 and RO1-HD25482). Additional support was provided by the Mellon Foundation (through a grant to the Carolina Population Center), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration grant (NAG5-6002), the National Science Foundation (SBR 93-10366), the Evaluation Project (USAID Contract #DPE-3060-C-00-1054), the MacArthur Foundation (95-31576A-POP), and a P30 centre grant to the Carolina Population Center from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD05798), and a grant from the MacArthur Foundation dealing explicitly with rural–urban interactions. We would also like to acknowledge the help and cooperation of numerous individuals who assisted in the design of the research described here. Numerous staff members and graduate students at the Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, Thailand. In particularly, the assistance of Phil McDaniel, Spatial Analyst, Rick O'Hara, Statistical Programmer and Mary Williams, Thailand Project Manager at the Carolina Population Center, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, is much appreciated. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we would like to acknowledge the cooperation of the people of Nang Rong.