Beyond Poverty: Socially Embedded Push Factors in Adolescent Rural-Urban Migration

Date: 5 March 2026

Time: 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM

Location: Room 626, Kaneff Tower

Registration: Register Here

Rural-urban migration among adolescents in the Global South is often explained through narrow economic frameworks that emphasize poverty and household survival. Drawing on qualitative data from adolescents who migrated from rural areas to urban centers, this presentation examines the multiple, socially embedded factors shaping adolescent migration decisions.

The findings reveal that migration is driven not only by livelihood insecurity linked to poor harvests and unpredictable weather, but also by adolescents' forward-looking aspirations related to education, vocational training, and preparation for socially recognized transitions into adulthood. By situating adolescent migration within a life-course and social reproduction framework, the paper argues that adolescents are active agents negotiating structural constraints, family obligations, and culturally defined expectations of responsibility. The study challenges reductive push-factor models and calls for policy and scholarly approaches that recognize adolescent migration as a complex social process shaped by environmental change, education systems, gender norms, and kinship relations.

Sylvia Esther Gyan (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Ghana, with over a decade of experience in teaching and research. Currently, she is a visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University.

Her primary research interest lies in the Sociology of Health, specializing in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Her work also encompasses Family Demography, Gender, Ageing, Climate Change, and Migration, with a particular focus on how structural inequalities influence women's well-being throughout their lives. Much of her research investigates women in vulnerable situations in the Global South, offering a comparative perspective on how health, gender, and family dynamics intersect with race, ethnicity, and migration to create inequalities.