This thesis is about rural–urban migration in Egypt. Its key aim is to analyze the rural–urban mobility strategy chosen by young men from villages in Upper Egypt (the southern part of the country) who move to Cairo. The empirical base of the study is made up of 242 questionnaire-based interviews with Upper Egyptian labor migrants in Cairo, supplemented by 20 more detailed interviews of such migrants and a period of fieldwork in selected villages of origin. Widespread use is also made of Egyptian census data to derive the quantitative estimates of the phenomenon; however the usefulness of this exercise is only partial given that not all rural–urban movement is actually recorded by the census