MIGRANT ADJUSTMENT TO CITY LIFE: THE EGYPTIAN CASE'

JANET ABU-LUGHOD

ABSTRACT
One third of Cairo's population are village migrants. Their pattern of settlement within the city is ex-
plored to reveal significant differences between types of migrants and to identify the kinds of adjustment
they are called upon to make to the new physical, economic, social, and ideological requirements of city
life. Certain anticipated difficulties in adjustment are found not to materialize, whereas others, often ig-
nored by sociologists, assume greater importance.

One of the most dramatic phenomena
of recent decades has been the urbanization
of large segments of the world'speasant folk,
particularly in rapidly industrializing coun-
tries. In few places has this urban growth
been as vigorous as in Egypt-at first spas-
modically in the 1940's stimulated by a war
economy, then more gradually in the 1950's
in response to the indigenous demands of
a developing economy2-until, at present,
one out of every three Egyptians lives in an
urban place having 20,000 or more persons.
Migration from ruralareas has been chief-
ly responsible for Egypt's soaring rate of
urbanization, even though natural increase,
still as high in cities as in rural areas, ac-
counts for half the annual rate of urban
growth. This migrationhas favored the very
largest cities of the country, bypassing those
of moderate and small size. Therefore there
has been a tendency for cities to conform to
the principle of allometric growth, with
high growth rates correlatedpositively with
rank as to size.3 Indeed, for the last three
1 This article is a revised summary version of a
paper presented to a conference on "The Emerging
Arab Metropolis" (Congress for Cultural Freedom
and the Egyptian Society of Engineers, co-spon-
sors) in Cairo, December, 1960.
2Expulsion from supersaturated rural environ-
ment ranks as an equally important element in
this growth.
'See Charles Stewart, Jr., "Migration as a Func-
tion of Population and Distance," American Soci-
ological Review, XXV (June, 1960), 347-56;
George Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of
the Least Effort (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley Press, 1949). Application of hypothesis to
Egyptian data prepared by present writer.
22
decades, cities of highest rank size have sus-
tained average rates of growth which are
more than twice the rate of natural increase,
while smaller towns, of between 20,000 to
30,000, have failed to keep pace with rates
of natural increase, i.e., have actually ex-
perienced net losses of population.
Migration, then, has had its prime im-
pact on the largest cities, and the towering
giant of Cairo, with a present population of
close to three and one-half million, has been
the most important recipient of the newly
urbanizing population. This paper, there-
fore, concentrates on the adjustment of
Egyptian villagers to life in Cairo, inquir-
ing into its nature and exploring the ele-
ments which mediate any dramatic transi-
tion between rural and urban life.
I. THE RURAL AND THE URBAN IN CAIRO
Sociologists studying the adjustment of
rural migrants to city life have been trapped
in a dilemmaof their own making.Even after
the replacement of the rural-urbandichot-
omy by the more reasonablecontinuum, the
sequence and dynamics of adjustment have
still been deduced as though the dichotomy
were valid; the unconscious assumptions
have led many students to an oversimplified
image of a one-way adjustment of ruralman
to a "stable" urban culture, despite lip serv-
ice paid to feedback and mutual assimila-
tion.
This adjustment is assumed to be disor-
ganizing in the extreme. Physically, it is en-
visioned as drastically altering the dwelling,
changingthe accoutermentswithin the home
as well as the neighborhoodsurroundingit,

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 MIGRANTADJUSTMENTTO EGYPTIAN CITIES
transforming the appearance and dress of
the migrant himself. Economically, the mi-
grant is seen as adjusting to changedoccupa-
tions and rhythms of work, to a new division
of labor within the family, and to different
relationships between work associates. So-
cially, it is hypothesized that the migrant
weans himself from the intimacy of the vil-
lage to the harsh superficial relationships
inherent in urban life, adapts himself from
the homogeneouspeer group to the diversi-
fied reference groups of the city, and suffers
a reduction in proximity-centeredsocial life
and neighboring. Culturally, he is assumed
to undergo a revolution in motivation,
values, and ideology. In short, according to
the rural-urban dichotomy, a hypothetical
villager is to be dropped, unarmed, into the
heart of urban Cairo to assimilate or perish.
He is to be granted no cushions to soften
his fall.
It is our contention here that the dichot-
omy is as invalid in Egypt and in many other
newly awakening nations as it is in the
Western nations, but for a somewhat differ-
ent reason. In these cases the dichotomy
has not yet sharpened due to the continual
ruralization of the cities.4
Only one fact need be cited to support
this allegation: More than one-third the
permanent residents of Cairo have been
born outside the city, that is, one out of
every three Cairenesis a migrant of one sort
or another, and the overwhelmingmajority
are from the ruralhinterlandswithin Egypt.5
To speak about one-way assimilation to a
stable urban culture when so large a minor-
ity comes equipped with needs and customs
4 It probably never will sharpen to the same
extent as it did in the West because simultaneously
with this ruralization of the cities is occurring an
urbanization of rural areas (extension of roads,
education, and social services). These processes were
temporarily distinct in Western development.
6 The 1947 Census of the Governorate of Cairo
shows that, of a total population of little more than
2 million, only 1.3 million had been born within
the city; 51,000 were born in other governorates
(large cities); 59,000 were born outside Egypt.
Thus more than 630,000 residents of Cairo came
from more or less rural sections of Egypt.
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23
of ruralorigin is folly. Numbers alone should
alert us to the probability that migrants are
shaping the culture of the city as much as
they are adjusting to it.
These rural migrants are drawn from two
extreme types which face basically different
problems of adjustment. One type, quali-
tatively the cream but numerically the less
significant,consists of bright youths who mi-
grate in search of education or wider op-
portunities. These have both the drive and
the facility for rapid assimilation into the
culture of the city. This paper ignores their
real but differentproblems.The second type,
referred to here as the "non-selective" mi-
grants, are drawn primarily from the have-
nots of the village. Numerically dominant,
they are as much driven from the village by
dearth of land and opportunity as they are
attracted to the city.6 With a lower capac-
ity for assimilation, they tend to build for
themselves within the city a replica of the
culture they left behind. They are the sub-
ject of this article.
A second circumstance which has kept
Cairo more rural than would be expected is
the continual incorporationinto the built-up
metropolitan region of pre-existing villages.
While some of these villages go back into
history, such as Mataria, the pharaonic
town of On (Greek, Heliopolis), some are
of fairly recent origin. It would take a keen
observerindeed to distinguishbetween a vil-
lage within Cairo and one located miles be-
yond its fringes. In fact, the city of Cairo
contains within its boundaries an extensive
rural-urbanfringe which stands juxtaposed
against modernvillas on the west, intervenes
on the alluvial flats between urban Misr
Qadima and suburban Maadi on the south,
dips deep into the very heart of the city from
the north, and, in somewhat different fash-
ion, encircles Medieval Cairo on its eastern
border. As can be seen from Figure 1, there
are vast quarterswithin the mosaic of Cairo
where, physically and socially, the way of
'See the unpublished findings of two American
sociologists, Karen and Gene Petersen, who have
made a sample study of 1,250 migrant families
from five Delta villages.
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 MIGRANT ADJUSTMENT TO EGYPTIAN CITIES
life and the characteristics of residents re-
semble rural Egypt.
While full proof of this contention lies
outside the scope of this paper,7 a few fig-
ures may illustrate this point. High literacy
is associated in Egypt with urbanism.In the
largest urban centers, literacy rates in 1947
ranged between 40 and 45 per cent, while
smaller towns and villages had literacy rates
of under 25 per cent. Yet, in one out of eight
census tracts in Cairo, the literacy rate was
less than 25 per cent. As might be expected,
the rural-urban fringe had the lowest lit-
eracy rates (5 and 7 per cent), but, surpris-
ingly enough, even some of the more inlying
zones containedpopulations no more literate
than the rural. Similar comparisons made
for other urban variables, such as refined
fertility rates, religious and ethnic homo-
geneity, and condition and type of building,
reveal the same inescapable fact that within
the city of Cairo there exist numerous sub-
areas whose physical and social character-
istics closely approximatethe villages of the
countryside.
II. WHERE MIGRANTS SETTLE IN CAIRO
It is thereforepossible for migrants to live
in any of the large sections of the city which
retain basic similarities to the village. To
what extent do they actually select such
areas as their ports of entry into the city's
structure? Since our hypothesis is that one
of the major cushions in the assimilation of
rural migrants is the nature of the subcom-
munity to which they gravitate, our concern
will be with the areas of first settlement of
"non-selective" migrants.
Direct evidence of where migrants settle
in the city is not available in the Cairo cen-
sus.8 In our attempt to approximate their
ecological distribution,however, we are aid-
ed by several circumstances: First, small
'It is presented in full detail in a book on
Cairo, prepared by the writer, to be published by
the Social Research Center of the American Uni-
versity at Cairo.
8A table showing place of birth by census tract
of current residence has, unfortunately, never been
included in any Cairo census.
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25
sample studies made in Egypt and other
industrializingcountries indicate that a fair-
ly typical pattern of initial settlement is
followed by many rural immigrants.9 The
typical migrant, here as elsewhere, is a
young man whose first contact in the city is
often with a friend or relative from his orig-
inal village, with whom he may even spend
the first few nights. Later, more permanent
lodgings are found, usually within the same
neighborhood. This process, in the aggre-
gate, results in a concentration of migrants
from particular villages within small sub-
sections of the city, far beyond what would
be expected by chance. Second, migration
to Cairohas tended to occurin major spurts,
the most important of recent times occur-
ring in the early 1940's. Therefore, not only
did the typical migrant gravitate to a small
area of the city already containing persons
from his home village, but he was not the
only newcomerat the time of his arrival.
These two factors, operating together,
resulted in the formation of small conclaves
of ex-villagers sharing a common past in
the village and a similar and often simul-
taneous history of adaptation to the city. A
parallel between this and the ethnic ghet-
tos of large American cities at the turn of
the century readily suggests itself. While the
congregationsof villagers from Kafr Bagour
and Garawanare smaller than were the Lit-
tle Sicilies and although villagers are segre-
gated (and segregate themselves) from the
main stream of urban life by less powerful
barriersthan language and Old World cus-
toms, they also have developed the protec-
tive pattern of physical proximity and cer-
tain social institutions which help mitigate
the difficulties of transition.
The formal associations founded for and
'See H. Saaty and G. Hirahayashi, Industrializa-
tion in Alexandria (Cairo: Social Research Center,
1959); "Demographic Aspects of Urbanization in
the ECAFE Region," in Urbanization in Asia and
the Far East (Calcutta: Research Center on the
Social Implications of Industrialization in Southern
Asia, 1957); a variety of papers in UNESCO, So-
cial Implications of Industrialization and Urban-
ization in Afria South of the Sahara (Paris: United
Nations, 1956), among others.
26 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
developed by migrants are important, di-
rectly, in the dynamics of rural to urban
adaptation, but are even more important in-
directly, since their location and distribution
in the city offer the only evidence as to
where migrants settle in Cairo. Before ana-
lyzing the locational pattern of these insti-
tutions, however, some explanation of their
nature is essential.
The Directory of Social Agencies in Cai-
ro10 lists more than 110 village benevolent
associations. The Garawan Benevolent So-
ciety is typical. Garawan,a village of 8,000,
is located in the heart of the Egyptain Delta
some forty miles northwest of Cairo. Popu-
lation pressureresultedfirst in the formation
of several daughter villages, but eventually
many of the men had to seek work in Cairo.
(The village has a heavy excess of females.)
The Garawan Benevolent Society was
founded in 1944 to "extend aid to members"
and to "provide burial facilities." Self-sup-
porting, it sustains its activities through the
dues contributed by "320 Egyptian Muslim
adult males from Garawan," according to
the directory'sentry. Using a most conserva-
tive estimate of size of family (two depend-
ents per adult male), one estimates that ap-
proximately 1,000 persons are to some ex-
tent involved in the core community of ex-
Garawanresidents.
One must make two basic assumptions if
the locations of these societies are to be used
as indirect evidence of migrant settlements.
First, it must be assumedthat migrantsfrom
specific villages are not distributed ran-
domly throughoutthe city but that the proc-
esses -described above result in aggregate
settlements of persons from the same vil-
lage."- Second, it must be assumed that the
Prepared by Isis Istiphan and published by
the Social Research Center, American University at
Cairo, 1956.
' Obviously, not all ex-residents would be found
in the Cairo settlement of maximum concentration,
since some, probably the most successful eco-
nomically, may have already moved to other sec-
tions of the city, while others never did follow the
typical pattern, for example, the selective migrants
or those with intervening experiences, such as army
service.
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office of the migrant association is located
in or near the subarea of the city which con-
tains the maximum concentration of mem-
bers. While this would not be true in every
case, one might reasonably expect some re-
lationship between office and clientele.
Even if these assumptionswere absolutely
beyond question (which they are not), an
analysis of the locations of the associations
would be irrelevant if they were scattered
capriciouslythroughoutthe entire city. This,
however, is fortunately not the case. When
the addresses listed in the directory are
located on a spot map, a definite, although
not simple, pattern emerges which indicates
in rough fashion the areas where rural mi-
grants seem to be concentrated. Most asso-
ciations fall within the elliptical belt around
but never within the central businessdistrict.
The arc contracts both east and west to a
bare quarter of a mile from central business
district and expandsnorth and south to more
than a mile from city center, thus conform-
ing to the general contours of the city.
NORTHERN SETTLEMENT
One-thirdthe migrant associations cluster
in -the segment of the city which radiates
northward from the central business dis-
trict, circumscribedsouth and east by major
rail lines, and bounded by the Nile to the
west and an agricultural zone to the north.
This section contains two subareas of dens-
est concentration: the first in the vicinity
of the Khazindar bus station; the other in
Al Sharabiya, northeast of the main train
terminal.
The Khazindar bus station has served
since the twenties as the terminus of bus
lines connecting Lower Egyptian provinces
(the Delta) with Cairo. Within a radius of
one-fourthof a mile of this station are eight
village associations, all representing Delta
villages; within half a mile are sixteen asso-
ciations, ten actually concentratedin a four-
by-six-block area just northeast of the sta-
tion. This area has a strange mixture of
urban and rural features. Behind the main
street on which the station stands, narrow
unpaved streets and alleys harbor prema-
 MIGRANT ADJUSTMENT TO EGYPTIAN CITIES 27

turely aged, badly deteriorated,urban hous- mercial zone north and west of it from the
ing interspersedwith the rural type of struc-native market and residential quarters to its
ture. The two- and three-story buildings south and east. Twenty-five associations are
contrast markedly with the six- to eight- located in this zone, while the remainder
story structures which dominate the main are scattered farthersouth towardOld Cairo.
street. A cluster of black-garbed women Most strikingis the fact that the majority
squat -togossip; old men sit in doorways; a of these associations represent villages of
sheep bleats; childrenswarmin packs. When Upper Egypt. Thus the principle of least ef-
this area received its major influx of mi- fort seems to determinemigrant distribution.
grants,it was an outpost of urbansettlement. Villagers coming from north of the city favor
As recently as 1940 there were farms just the northernquadrantof the city, while those
to the north. By now, however, the city has coming from the south prefer location in the
swept beyond it. southern quadrant. But, whereas the former
The second concentration of migrant as- have their associations in family residential
sociations is located in the tiny quarter of zones near the city's fringe, the latter have
Al Sharabiya, where seven associations al- theirs in a marginalcommercialdistrict char-
most all from Delta villages are located acterized by a heavy excess of unmarried
within four blocks. Occupationally, many males.12 Further examination reveals that
residents are bound to the rail yards that the latter are primarily in rented offices,
virtually surroundit. Despite its geographi- whereas the former are frequently in the
cally central location, this section presents home of the association's president.
a distinctly rural aspect and retains a close What accounts for the remarkablediffer-
functional tie to the rural fringe, since ence? One hypothesis can be offered here.
farms bound it where rail lines do not. Migrants from Delta villages follow a differ-
Lower buildings, some of mud brick, pre- ent pattern of migration and hence make a
dominate. Commercial establishments are differenttype of adjustment to the city than
those of the large village or small town. Al do migrants from Upper Egyptian villages.
Sharabiya and Khazindar areas contain First, migrants from the Delta move pri-
most of the migrantassociations of the city'smarily in family groups,while those from the
northern quadrant. (The remainder are south either remain single or leave their
scattered within the belt shown on Fig. 1.) wives and children in their home villages.
Most of the associations in this quadrant In Cairo in 1947, of the 400,000 migrants
represent Lower Egyptian villages. Hence from Lower Egypt, half were males and half
many migrants have presumably settled females, but 200,000 out of the 250,000 mi-
close not only to their point of origin but, grants from Upper Egypt were males. Thus
even more specifically, to their point of en-the sex ratio of Delta migrants was remark-
try into the city, i.e., the bus terminal.More-
ably well balanced, while there were four
over, the migrantssettling in this part of the
men for every woman among Upper Egyp-
city selected areas which were, at the time of
tian migrants in Cairo.
settlement at least, on the outer edge of the Second, significant occupational differ-
built-up city. ences between the two migrant groups affect
both adjustment patterns and spatial dis-
SOUTHERN SETTLEMENT
tribution. Upper Egyptian migrants go pri-
Another third of more of the migrant marily into domesticand otherpersonalserv-
associations are clustered directly south of
12 The sex ratio here is 129 in the ages most likely
the central business district, quite distant
from the southern rural-urban fringe. The to be imbalanced by migration, 15 to 49; in the
northern section it is only 104. Forty per cent of
densest concentation is found in the transi- males of marriageable age are unmarried here,
tional business district-a curved intersti- while only 25 per cent are unmarried in the north-
tial belt buffering the Western-style com- ern section (computed from 1947 census).

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28 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
ices or work in unskilled labor gangs, while
the occupationsfollowed by Lower Egyptian
migrants are both more varied and less like-
ly to include housing as a part of wages.13
In the light of this the major differences
between the location of migrant associations
representingUpper and Lower Egyptian vil-
lages become nmorecomprehensible.The as-
sociations of Upper Egyptians are located in
an area which serves as a leisure-time focal
point as well as a residentialarea catering to
single men. This is both cause and effect of
the character of Upper Egyptian migrants.
The associations play a more active role in
their lives, in part because their members
are denied access to the alternative social
unit, the family.
CENTRAL ZONE, EAST AND WEST OF THE
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT
The remaining associations are divided
between Boulaq, which forms the western
quadrant of the ellipse, and Bab al-Shariya
and Waily, the eastern portion of the belt.
Ten associations are located within the
former zone, while twenty have addressesin
the latter. Just as the ecological position of
these areas is midway between the northern
concentration of Delta village associations
and the southern concentration of Upper
Egyptian associations,so, sociologically,they
lie midway, containing associations from
both regions of the country in roughly equal
proportions. They share still other similari-
ties. Both are close to the central business
district; both rank low in socioeconomic
status (below both shubra and the transi-
tional business zone); both are primarily
family areas; and both contain the densest
slums of the city: densities of up to 900,000
persons per square mile are recorded for
small subsections of Boulaq, and the over-
all density of the community area of Bab
al-Shariya is the highest in the city. Of the
13The Directoryof SocialAgencieslists the dom-
inant occupations of members of each association.
Government and manual workers are listed most
frequently for Lower Egyptian associations, while
servants, porters, and messengers are the most fre-
quently mentioned occupations for Upper Egyptian
associations.
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two, Boulaq is the older and hence the one
retaining more rural qualities in its build-
ings and streets, but even Bab al-Shariya,
despite its uniformly high apartment build-
ings looming above narrow access alleys,
contains a population more rural than urban
in its ways.
These, then, are the areas to which mi-
grants have gravitated within the city. That
they are relatively scarce in the highest ren-
tal zones of the city is attributable to their
low socioeconomicstatus. Migrants are rela-
tively absent, also from the rural-urban
fringe proper which would, as we have seen,
provide them with the most familiar and
protective environment. The lack of rental
housing in these areas (privately owned
farms with villages for laborers only), the
dearth of public transportation, and their
desire to live close to their new jobs are un-
doubtedly important reasons for their rejec-
tion of these areas. A second area surpris-
ingly overlookedin the search for "near-the-
fringe" living is Medieval Cairo, that rec-
tangular belt of oldest structures toward the
eastern edge of the city. The complete ab-
sence of new housing in these districts,
coupled with a low turnoverrate (the popu-
lation works at traditional crafts and trades
whereproduction,selling, and living quarters
are often in the same structure), have proba-
bly prevented mass invasions by new mi-
grants.
III. HYPOTHESES CONCERNING
MIGRANT ADJUSTMENT
Earlier, the hypotheses of migrant ad-
justmentwere brokendowninto four classes:
physical, economic, social, and ideological.
In light of the locational material presented
above, plus observations of both rural and
city life in Egypt,14these will be definedhere
'1 The author has spent more than three years in
Egypt, one and a half at a UNESCO project in a
village area and two years in Cairo studying the
structure of that city. Many observations have
been further authenticated by anthropologists and
social workers with longer and more intimate ex-
perience in both areas, to whom the author ex-
presses gratitude.
 MIGRANT ADJUSTMENT TO EGYPTIAN CITIES 29

in an attempt to describe the peculiarities and which, during the winter months, heats
of migrant adjustment in Egypt. the adjacent areas and provides a snug bed
for a blanketless family. That its loss is
PHYSICAL viewed with distress by at least some mi-
We have already suggested that many grants is evidenced by the fact that some
migrantsgravitate to areas lying close to the seek the top floor of an urban dwelling to
rural-urban fringe, while others settle in construct a village oven and advise new-
areas which have at least a cultural resem- comers from their village to do the same.15
blance to semiruralareas. In these sections, Other changes in the home are viewed
interior streets and alleyways are seldom more favorably, since they conform to the
used for wheeled traffic,leaving undisturbed aspirations of villagers. Among the objects
the rural functions of the street as pathway, high in status found in the most prosperous
meeting place, playground, and tethering rural homes are small kerosene burners in-
area for animals. stead of dung-cake fires for cooking, ward-
Greater adjustments are required with robes and china closets to store a growing
respect to both the dwelling and the physical stock of consumption items, and the high
neighborhood.Housing occupied by the ma- four-posterbed with its black wrought-iron
jority of migrants is more urban than rural frame embellished with gilt, which remains,
in style. This results in functional over- in the city as in the village, the most impor-
crowding more severe than in the villages. tant sign of status. These are items with
The village home minimizes the number of which migrants tend to crowd their urban
inclosed rooms in order to maximize private homes, as soon as they can afford them.
open space (a ground-level interior court- The dress of migrants changes little in
yard or a protected roof courtyardin a more the city. Only the selective migrants change
commodious two-story home). This cher- completely from the galabiya (long loose
ished space is eliminated in the multifamily robe) to pants and shirts; for non-selec-
flats of the city. While many of the tasks as- tive migrants the change is rarely required
signed to the courtyard are no longer per- to conform to the urban pattern, and it is
formedin the city (drying dung cakes, stor- occupationrather than status per se or place
ing crops, tethering animals), other social of birth which dictates appropriate attire.
uses such as cooking, eating, and just sitting It is perhaps because of this that the change
are drivenindoorsor to the streets in the city. is more frequently attempted by Delta than
Not only is the home more compressed by Upper Egyptian migrants.
due to the loss of outdoor "overspill"space, Change in dress presents more difficult
but the neighborhoodis also more concen- problemsfor the women. The universaldress
trated. While residential densities in Egyp- of village women is a high-necked, long-
tian villages are surprisinglyhigh, they no- sleeved printed gown which is then covered
where approach the densities of Cairo's by a black one of similar cut. A kerchief
poorer districts. Many families using a com- and then a black mantilla completely cover
mon stairwell and public utilities means, the hair. While many village women retain
paradoxically, more intensive contact with this attire in the city (as do many old city
neighborsthan in the village; and adjusting residents), some of the younger of them
to the inadvertent intimacy may be ex- first discardthe black garmentand later may
tremely difficult for people new to the city, adopt a modifiedurbanversion of the printed
particularly for women. gown with cutout neckline and daring three-
Within the home itself are other changes, quarter-length sleeves.
of which the loss of the overroomis perhaps The foregoing remarks apply best to
the most important. In the rural home one 15Reported by Hind Abu el Seoud, an anthro-
full room is devoted to the massive flat- pologist studying a small Delta village and its ex-
topped oven in which bread is baked daily residentsin Cairo.

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 30 THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
Delta families making a relatively perma-
nent adjustment to the city. They do not
apply with equal force to upper Egyptian
migrants working as domestic servants or in
other occupationswhere housing is provided
or to those who remain unmarried or leave
their families in the village. Paradoxically,
this group, exposed most intensively to a
completely new physical environment, is
least assimilated to Cairo.A lifetime spent in
sections of the city which contrast sharply
with the village environmentaffects a super-
ficial sophistication unmatched by the man-
ual laborer from the Delta living in a quasi-
rural district. It seems, however, that the
very lack of gradual transition and of the
mediatinginfluencesof family and neighbor-
hood has the reverse effect of prolongingthe
period when one is a stranger. This type of
migrant often completely rejects urban life,
confining his periodic social contacts to co-
villagers often in his own profession and
his "real" life to infrequent sojourns to his
village family.
ECONOMIC
In their villages of origin, migrants were
engaged almost exclusively in agriculture.
Men worked long and hard during the three
sowing and harvesting periods in the Delta
and the two crop-change periods in Upper
Egypt, these periods of intense activity being
followed by slower seasons of maintenance
and community sociability. The basic
rhythm of rural life thus dictated large finite
jobs alternating with lighter routine work.
The length of the work day varied with the
stage of the cycle.
Women's work was more evenly distrib-
uted, with child care, the preparation of
food and bread, the making of dung cakes,
and the tendingof livestock performeddaily.
Work in the fields was done during the early
morning hours, except during the busy sea-
sons, when it absorbed a greater portion of
the day. Labor was communalwithin the ex-
tended family home and, when outdoors,
was usually performed in company.
Laundry is a case in point. In the village,
washing is done in the canal or now, in-
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creasingly, at the communal water taps. It
is never a solitary activity. Contrast this
with how laundry is done in Al Sharabiya,
a migrant area described above-"' Water is
also secured from communaltaps, but a man
guards the tap, effectively discouraging
women from washing at the site. Women
carry their water home to wash in solitude
within their dwellings. Other functions are
similarly driven indoors or eliminated alto-
gether. Thus the ex-village woman experi-
ences a reduction in her work load (except
where outside employment is taken), but,
at the same time, she experiences an even
greater reduction in the social life which
formerly attended her labors.
The experience of migrant men, on the
other hand, is often the reverse.The work of
a city manual laborer is probably more tax-
ing, certainly more evenly distributed over
time, and usually less solitary than rural
work. Exceptions must be made for migrants
working as itinerant peddlers, shoe-shiners,
tea-makers, etc., and, of course, for those
workingas domestic servants. These occupa-
tions are both more independently regulated
and somewhat more isolating from contacts
of a primary nature.
To what extent do migrants working at
steady jobs in the company of others come
into contact with associates from different
backgrounds?Social heterogeneity is one of
the distinguishing characteristics of urban-
ism, but for this to create the mental coun-
terpart-cultural relativity-heterogeneous
persons must come into intimate contact
with each other. While in large-scale fac-
tories the mixing of diverse people undoubt-
edly occurs, the overwhelming majority of
commercialand industrialfirmsin Cairoem-
ploy only a few persons, often within the
same family. Furthermore, migrants often
dependupon their compatriotsto guide them
to their first jobs. Sometimes, migrants seek
out well-known "successes" from their vil-
lage to give them employment. Thus mi-
grants cluster together not only residentially
"
Account provided by Abdel Monem Shawky,
former social worker in the district for fourteen
years.
 MIGRANT ADJUSTMENTTO EGYPTIAN CITIES
but also on the job as well. In the smaller
firms of Cairo, then, a far greater homo-
geneity of the work force exists than would
have been expected by chance. Far from
isolating the migrant fromnhis fellow vil-
lagers, his job may actually consolidate his
village ties.
SOCIAL
The hypotheses presented by Louis Wirth
in his logical statement17of the differences
between the rural and urban ways of life
have been misused, as if they were facts,
and many of the concepts almost self-evi-
dent to sociologists studying Americancities
have proved less valid when applied to the
growing body of data about non-Western
and preindustrial cities. While isolated ref-
utations have appeared,'8 as yet there has
been no major reformulationof the theory.
Wirth hypothesized that the ecological de-
terminan,tsof a city (large numbersof heter-
ogeneous people in dense, permanent settle-
ment) would have certain social conse-
quences, notably anonymity, dependence
upon impersonal relations and sanctions,
sophistication, and tolerance of change. To
what extent do the social relationships in
Cairo conform to these predicated types,
and, further, how much does the rural mi-
grant really have to adjust his personality
to become a functioning member of urban
society?
While these questions are too ambitious
to be answered here, two propositions are
suggested. First, the culture of Cairo fails to
be characterizedchiefly by anonymity, sec-
ondary contacts, and the other attributes of
17
Louis Wirth, "tJrbanism as a Way of Life,"
American Journal of Sociology, XLIV (July, 1938),
1-24, which essentially reformulates the work of
earlier German scholars, such as Max Weber, The
City, ed. and trans. D. Martindale and G. Neuwirth
(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958); and Georg Sim-
mel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in The So-
ciology of Georg Simmel, trans. Kurt Wolff (Glen-
coe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), pp. 409-24.
" See, e.g., Gideon Sjoberg, "The Preindustrial
City," American Journal of Soei'logy, LX (March,
1955), 438-45; Horace Miner, The Primitive City
of Timbuctoo (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1953).
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31
urban life. Second, migrants to Cairo are
active creators of a variety of social institu-
tions whose major function is to protect mi-
grants from the shock of anomie.
Middle Eastern culture places a high
value on personal relationships, even at a
sacrifice of privacy and internal develop-
ment. This, combinedwith a system of rela-
tionships based on the extended kinship
group, serves to increase the number of pri-
mary ties far beyond what Western sociol-
ogists, reasoning from their own experience,
dare to assume possible.19This network of
personalassociationsenmeshesnot hundreds
but thousands of individuals.
Were Cairo merely an amorphousmass of
individuals,this network,large as it is, might
account for but a small fraction of the indi-
vidual's contacts. However, Cairo is not one
community but, rather, many separate so-
cial communities.Functional sections of each
communitymay be geographicallyseparated
-residence in one section, business in an-
other, recreationin still another. A member
of one community may pass daily through
the physical site of communities other than
his own, neither "seeing"them nor admitting
their relevance to his own life. But, within
his own community, there is little if any
anonymity.
It is within this context of "urbanism"
that the Egyptian migrant is called upon to
adjust. His adjustment is further facilitated
by the formal and informal institutions he
develops within his small community, one of
which has already been mentioned-the vil-
lage benevolent society. Through it many
migrants receive moral support from their
compatriots as well as insurance against the
insecurities of urban life, that is, isolation
in poverty, sickness, and death.20It is un-
19 Weber himself rejected impersonal relations as
a useful part of the city's definition, noting that
"various cultural factors determine the size at
which 'impersonality' tends to appear" (op. cit.,
p. 65). See also Richard Dewey, "The Rural-Ur-
ban Continuum," Amerian Journal of Sociology,
LXVI (July, 1960), 60-66.
20 Burial services, offered by almost all associa-
tions, parallel the burial-insurance organizations of
Negro rural migrants to northern cities.
 32 THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY
likely, however, that more than 100,000 mi-
grants are involved in these associations,
while it will be recalled that their number
exceeded600,000 in 1947. Thus, even if these
associations are important to the persons
they serve, they fall short of absorbingmost
migrants.
Other formal institutions play a relatively
minor role in providing social groups for mi-
grant identification. Labor unions (except
for craft guilds), civic associations, chari-
table organizations,and political groups are
all relatively undeveloped social institutions
in Cairo.One must look, then, to the informal
social institutions for a fuller understanding
of patterns of adjustment. Unfortunately,
documentation in this area is totally lack-
ing. While a few may be singled out as play-
ing important roles, no estimate of their
magnitude can be offered.
First in importance is undoubtedly the
coffee shop in which Middle Eastern males
conduct their social and often their business
lives. The comparable Western institution
is probably the old style of British pub
which, with its set of steady patrons and its
intimate atmosphere,served as a social focus
for the individual's life. Many an Egyptian
coffee shop is run by a villager to serve men
from that particular village. News of the
village is exchanged, mutual assistance for
employment is given, and the venture more
resembles a closed club than a commercial
enterprise.
For the women no such informal associa-
tion is available. While within the village
there are also no purely female informal as-
sociations, religious festivals, births, deaths,
marriages,circumcisions,etc., are all village-
wide events in which women have important
roles to play. Within the city, however,these
events become more private, and the role
of women as full participants is probably
reduced. Social life in the city is confined
more and more to the immediate neighbor-
hood.
It is this immediate neighborhood, how-
ever, which constitutes, after the family, the
most important informal social institution
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for migrantsin the city. The cohesivenessof
the neighborhood is strengthened by the
tendency of persons from the same village to
settle together. Similar to the situation else-
where, it is the women, children, and very
old persons who are the most active partici-
pants in neighborhood-centeredsocial life.
MOTIVATIONS AND IDEOLOGY
The Weltanschauung of the city man is
presumedto differ from the peasant's in sev-
eral significant ways. First, relaxation of
the heavy hand of personal social control in
the village is assumedto give greaterlatitude
for individual differentiation.Second, cities
are assumed to foster a more secular, ra-
tional, and mechanistic ordering of activi-
ties. Third, cities are gateways to a more
sophisticated knowledge of the outside
world. Finally, cities have traditionally been
the centers of movements of social change,
from new religionsto new political ideologies
and transfers of power.
While these statements are valid premises,
data on Cairo are lacking which would per-
mit us to place rural migrants along the
continuum from the sacred, conformist, iso-
lated, and relatively static state of the ideal
folk society to the extreme of urbanismout-
lined above. For one thing, the Egyptian
village hardly conforms to the ideal proto-
type of a folk society. Where farmers raise
cash crops tied to international markets
(cotton and sugar), listen to radios, travel
often to market towns, have relatives or
friends in the cities, and send their children
to schools following a national curriculum,
the magic ring of isolation has already been
broken. On the other hand, as already dem-
onstrated, it is possible within Cairo to lead
a fairly circumscribedexistence outside the
main stream of urban life. Therefore, while
there may be a wide gap between the least-
sophisticated villager and the most-sophisti-
cated urbanite, there is certainly no indica-
tion that migrants necessarily pass from one
pole to the other.
AMERICANUNIVERSITYAT CAIRO, EGYPT