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Oral poetry is an improvised narrative or song on a given theme that serves to pass on a range of facts and beliefs from one generation to the other in a given society. In order to improve their life in many ways, Borena Wereda´s rural people migrate to urban areas. These people move to Awash, Gewanie, Asayita, Jimma, Tebbi, Addis Ababa and other areas. The people have developed oral poems by which they record and recount their feelings and experiences. The study takes account of variables of Cernea´s impoverishment risks and reconstruction model (IRR) (2000) from resettlement and displacement theories. Most of Cernea´s variables were found to have parallels in the oral poems. The themes of the oral poetry suggest that the descriptions of urban areas before the relocation and the realities after migrants have migrated to urban areas do not fit.

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Solomon Debebe is a young Social Anthropologist with an MA degree in Social Anthropology and another MA degree in English Literature from the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He has been working on migration, displacement and resettlement issues for many years. This book brings a new insight into studying the issue of rural-urban migration.

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