Urban attraction: Bhutanese internal rural–urban migration

Internal migration in developing countries often occurs in a rural–urban migration context. In many Asian countries, rural–urban migration has been widely documented; however, it has not been widely documented in the Bhutanese context. Bhutan, a landlocked country in Southeast Asia, is situated between China and India, with China to the north and India to the south. This research documents the rural–urban migration that is occurring in Bhutan using data from the most recent Population and Housing Census of Bhutan, conducted in 2005, and Geographic Information Systems to identify spatial migration patterns, identifying Bhutanese urban areas as having the highest percentage of in-migrants, and the rural areas as having the highest number of out-migrants. This research also uses ancillary information to help explain the patterns from the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan data.