This thirteen-chapter volume, based on a conference held in South Africa in June 2003, describes and compares patterns of internal, regional and international migration in Africa, with comparative insights from Asia and Latin America. It strives to evaluate how migration and urban living influences well-being among movers and stayers in the context of rapid social, economic and political change that characterizes most African nations.

The authors, an international team of over twenty academics and experts in the field, push the frontiers of current African migration and urbanization research and strive for an original synthesis of insights from ongoing studies. The comparative focus highlights similarities across diverse contexts in order to bring place-specific processes into sharper relief. The study challenges certain traditional notions about migration, revisiting notions of the urban and rural, and explores how communication technology influences movement.

Topics considered range from broad comparative perspectives on linkages between population movement, urban structures and economic development to the spread of infectious diseases and the social regulation of migration flows. Issues of gender and ethnic inequities are incorporated and there is a strong focus on internal migration and urban systems within Africa. The study is structured in three sections: migration and urbanization in global and regional contexts; internal migration, employment and gender; and migration and population health.

Marta Tienda is professor in demographic studies, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University; Sally Findley is a professor of clinical population and family health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University; Stephen Tollman heads the School of Public Health's Health & Population Division at the University of the Witwatersrand and chairs the University's Population Program; Eleanor Preston-Whyte is currently a researcher in the field of social anthropology and holds a research professorship in the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.