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Mirembe, et al.

had a significant association with employment status of the migrant. As regard to self-employed youths in the country,
self-employed youths spend most of their time working in their own small scale business and they are largely engaged in
petty businesses such as operating chapatti stalls, retail shops, restaurants, mobile money outlets, saloons, bars, boutiques,
artisanry, motorcycle cyclists, selling narcotic drugs, market stalls, petty trade, bricklaying, building and construction,
mechanical repair, maintenance and food processing, and operating taxi vehicles (Magelah and Ntambirweki-Karugonjo,
2014). Given the fact that there are limited jobs in the country, self-employment is actually the dream of each and every
youth in the country. The various advantages attached to it, that is, independence, control, and freedom from routine make
it the most preferable employment status among the youths. In other words, the youth is able to decide when, where and
how to work (Goldin, Hobson, Glick et al., 2015)).
Employed status is a situation in which a youth is engaged or hired into a service with an intention of being paid at
the end of either a day, a week, or a month (Shamchiyeva, 2017). The study results revealed that age, residence, number
of children, region, fuel used for cooking, and social networks did not have any association with employed status while
sex, marital status, highest education level, and reasons for migration had an association with the possibility of a migrant
youth being employed. In Uganda, most of the male youths are employed in activities such as mechanics, welding, mobile
money, and carpentry and most female youths are employed in activities such as hair dressing, shop attendants, and
mobile money businesses. However, most of the youths take on employed status as a means of surviving and as well be
able to raise capital to start up their own businesses (Shamchiyeva, 2017).
In the study, reasons for migration were subdivided into social, economic, and forced reasons. Results of the study
revealed that reasons for migration have a significant association with self-employment status and employed status.
With self-employment status, the relative risk of a youth being self-employed over one who was unemployed was lower
for a youth who migrated due to social reasons relative to a youth who migrated due to economic reasons. On the other
hand, the relative risk of a youth being employed over a youth who was unemployed was also lower for a youth who had
migrated due to social reasons relative to a youth who had migrated due to economic reasons. Results of the study are in
agreement with a study conducted by United Nations (2011) in developing countries which also suggested that there was
a significant association between reasons for migration and employment status because youths usually leave their places
of origin to new destination areas where they believe they can easily access employment to stabilize their income as well
as have a stronger and greater engagement in the society (United Nations, 2011).

5. Policy Implications
Our findings have important policy implications. Local governments should include the needs of the youths, especially
those aged 33-35 years because they have almost three more odds to be migrants as compared to youths aged 18-22 years.
This could be done through infrastructural development and provision of social services and amenities (such as electricity,
improvement and construction of new education facilities, improve health-care delivery, safe water, tightening of security,
and upgrading of local markets) to their local communities so as to encourage the youths to stay and carry out economic
activities in their places of origin other than moving away to the nearby urban areas which are already worsened with
effects of unplanned urbanization.
With the region having a strong association with migration status, informal settlement evictions should be ended. Many
rural to urban migrants live in informal settlements and face intense disruptions to both their home life and livelihoods
through the threat of eviction. There should be increase in the capacity of state and nonstate stakeholders to upgrade
informal settlements and orientate urban planning that supports access to basic services and affordable housing.
There is also a need to overcome the problem of regional imbalance which is one of the causes of migration. To do
this, governments should work in hand with the private sector to improve service delivery, create more employment
opportunities and redistribute tax revenues so that poorer localities can have the capacity to provide adequate local public
services hence leading to equitable growth in the country.
While we stressed the strengths of our study, the study has some limitations. For example, some information about
nonmigrants was not available, such as socioeconomic status of the migrant’s place of origin/sending household, living
conditions, wages, which made the dataset rather lacking on some variables which would otherwise have enriched the study.
Age was also a limitation because it is usually affected by social desirability bias, cultural, and other issues in the country.
6. Conclusions

The study has provided insights about associates of migration status and migrant employment status. Further research is
needed to assess reasons for migration with other individual or household level factors.

International Journal of Population Studies | 2019, Volume 5, Issue 1 47