Social Factors in Iraqi Rural-Urban Migration.

Iraq, or Mesopotamia, as the Greeks named it, is one of the Arab countries of the Middle East with very acute land problems. Although this predominantly agricultural country contains the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which has fertile lands and has always been rich in resources, the land is unequally distributed. It is estimated that almost three-fourths of the population depend for their livelihood on the produce of the land. Accordingly land has great significance to a great number of people. The land problem, though grave, is only one of several causes of the migration from rural areas to the major cities of Iraq, which has occurred mostly during the last two decades. The purpose of this article is to examine the causes of the continuous migration from rural areas to the large cities, especially to Baghdad, Iraq, and to analyze and describe the conditions of the migrants. The movement of rural people to the main cities, especially to Baghdad, is a recent phenomenon, which is not directly caused by urbanization or industrialization. The system of landownership along with the political dissension among the peasants is the direct causes of migration. This problem has many repercussions, among the most significant of which is the cultural gap between the rural tribal migrants and the urbanites.