The persistent increase in the number of people working or living on the
streets in Ghana, and the resulting surge in the government of Ghana’s
interest in urban streetism necessitate a study of the phenomenon and
provide an opportunity to ascertain the recent claim by social economists
that the institutional-structuralist approach to migration research is superior
to the neoclassical and new economics of labour migration (NELM)
approach for which limited empirical research at the urban level has been
conducted. Drawing on published ethnographic studies and on a synthesis
of other published existing data interpreted within the broad methodology
of institutional-structuralism, the paper shows that neither the decision to
migrate nor the decision to return is based on individual calculations alone.
Similarly, rural poverty does not provide sufficient explanation for
rural-urban migration. There are clearly push and pull factors in the process
of migration, but these are institutional and structural rather than individual
and household based. The experiences of migrants on streets in urban
centres are diverse but most of them are underemployed rather than
unemployed. Most intend to return to their origins, but whether they do
so, when, and how are conditioned by the class of migrants and changing
social institutions such as property rights that pertain in both the rural
and urban contexts. For these reasons, policies framed around the
assumptions in mainstream analysis of labour migration such as removing
urban bias and enhancing rural development have merely re-enforced the
process of uneven urban and regional development.