For one who has spent the equivalent of five years in the field studying many aspects of migration, the writing of this brief chapter presents especial difficulty, for so many different disconnected facets of such a vast and emotive subject keep intruding into one's consciousness. Besides, many of the misconceptions one is concerned to expose represent what Hart has called ‘diffuse opinion’: while ‘it is hard to find such an opinion documented in print by reputable scholars, … its popular currency is palpable enough’.

One might say that the gulf between economists and economic anthropologists was especially wide on this topic, were it not for the notable and iconoclastic work by economists emanating from the Institute of Development Studies. When the outstanding and well-appreciated work of the anthropologist Hart is added to this, what need can there be to go on protesting? The answer lies partly in the very emotiveness of the subject; in the universal fear that the growth of urbanization is ‘an index of rural malaise’ – whereas, in fact, it is neither novel nor dysfunctional, for ‘migration and movement were intrinsic to the indigenous population's way of life even before the concentration of economic opportunities on the coast set up today's asymmetrical drift from savannah villages to forest plantations and city slums’. It is also necessary to emphasize that, for all we know, many long-established flows have recently become reversed, especially in Ghana, owing to the very high inflation rates and the difficulty of procuring foodstuffs in cities.