Cyclist at Central Market E, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Binh Dang Nam via Unsplash.
Key Question
What economic, environmental, and social factors compel Cambodians to migrate from rural villages to urban centers?
Project Summary
Through traditional and distributed ethnographic methods, the research team is exploring the lived experiences of Cambodian migrants from rural villages to urban centers; the factors that drove the decision to migrate; and the changes that result from becoming urban.
This research project seeks to understand the process of becoming urban at a critical time in Cambodian history. Combining traditional and distributed ethnographic methods, the research team will explore and analyze the lived experiences of migrants from rural villages to urban centers; the economic, environmental, and social factors that drove the decision to migrate; and the changing connections to place, space, and people that result from becoming urban. Ultimately, the project aims to produce a deeper understanding of the lived experience of migrants and a better account of their transformation from villagers to urbanites.
Anni Beukes is an urban researcher working at the nexus of poverty, populations, and politics. In her research and practice, Beukes draws across disciplinary methods in the social, spatial, and data sciences to generate new data and design knowledge-making processes with young people in urban ...
Marco Garrido's research focuses on the relationship between the urban poor and middle class in Manila as located in slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. The project has been to connect this relationship with urban structure on the one hand and political dissensus on the other, and in so ...
Bernard E. and Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College
University of Chicago
Kolata Leads ongoing interdisciplinary research projects studying human-environment interactions over the past 3000 years in the Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia, on the north coast of Peru and most recently in Thailand and Cambodia. His recent research interests include comparative work on ...
Centre for Natural Resources and Environment of Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI)
Monin Nong is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Natural Resources and Environment of Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI). His research interests are water hygiene and sanitation, climate change adaptation, gender equality, vulnerability and adaptation assessment, climate change and ...
Julio Postigo's research interests include the synergic effects of climate change and capitalism on rural landscapes and pastoralists; the generation of rural local knowledge for farming decision-making and weather forecasting; and rural institutions and the post-Peace Agreement in Colombia.
To ...
Senior Instructional Professor and Director of Academic Programs, CEGU
University of Chicago
Sabina Shaikh is a Senior Instructional Professor and the Director of Academic Programs for the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) in the Division of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. She is the faculty director of Chicago Studies, co-leads the Environmental ...
Lecturer and Researcher; Fellow, Center for Khmer Studies
Royal University of Phnom Penh
Try Thuon received his PhD in Social Sciences from Chiang Mai University. His research interests include resource politics, water governance, urban climate resilience, informal settlements, urban heritages. His dissertation examines the politic of space making and resilience practices in Cambodia ...
The Drivers and Perceptions of Migration in the Lower Mekong River Basin
The Drivers and Perceptions of Migration in the Lower Mekong River Basin
A new paper by members of the Becoming Urban research team reveals a "complex web" of interacting socio-environmental factors driving migration to Cambodian cities.
Using the Mekong River in Cambodia as a case study, this paper discusses how to understand rivers as food environments, how rivers underpin food security, and their unique features and threats.
A new paper published in the journal World Development considers "the interrelated impacts of credit access, market access and forest proximity on livelihood strategies in Cambodia."
Much of the Chicago School’s scholarship has focused on the process of “becoming urban”: the process of becoming entangled in a set of urban networks, coming to identify with certain urban places, ...
The Drivers and Perceptions of Migration in the Lower Mekong River Basin
The Drivers and Perceptions of Migration in the Lower Mekong River Basin
A new paper by members of the Becoming Urban research team reveals a "complex web" of interacting socio-environmental factors driving migration to Cambodian cities.
Using the Mekong River in Cambodia as a case study, this paper discusses how to understand rivers as food environments, how rivers underpin food security, and their unique features and threats.
A new paper published in the journal World Development considers "the interrelated impacts of credit access, market access and forest proximity on livelihood strategies in Cambodia."
Much of the Chicago School’s scholarship has focused on the process of “becoming urban”: the process of becoming entangled in a set of urban networks, coming to identify with certain urban places, ...
Cities and Economic Development: From the Dawn of History to the PresentChicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988Read
Bylander, M.
“Depending on the Sky: Environmental Distress, Migration, and Coping in Rural Cambodia”International Migration 53, no. 5 (2015): 135–147Read
Demont, F. and P. Heuveline
Diversity and Change in Cambodian Households, 1998-2006Journal of Population Research (Canberra) 25, no. 3 (2008): 287–313Read
Derks, A.
Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban CambodiaHawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2008Read
Evans, A.
“How Cities Erode Gender Inequality: A New Theory and Evidence from Cambodia”Gender & Society 33, no. 6 (2019): 961–984Read
Garrido, M. Z.
The Patchwork City: Class, Space and Politics in Metro ManilaChicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019Read
Haraway, D. J.
Staying with the Trouble: Making kin in the ChthuluceneDurham and London: Duke University Press, 2016Read
Heinonen, U.
“Environmental Impact on Migration in Cambodia: Water-related Migration from the Tonle Sap Region”International Journal of Water Resources Development 22, no. 3 (2006): 449–462Read
Jellinek, L.
The Wheel of Fortune: The History of a Poor Community in JakartaHawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1991Read
Lefebvre, H.
Marxist Thought and the CityMinneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016Read
Peou, C.
“Negotiating Rural-Urban Transformation and Life Course Fluidity: Rural Young People and Urban Sojourn in Contemporary Cambodia"Journal of Rural Studies 44 (2016): 177–186Read
Sassen, S.
Expulsion: Brutality and Complexity in the Global EconomyCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014Read
Saunders, D.
Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our WorldNew York: Vintage Books, 2012Read
Springer, S.
Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order: Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public SpaceLondon: Routledge, 2010Read
