Labor Migration Is the Movement of an Able-Bodied Person Essay Example

the quantum of remittances and poverty reduction potential of these. While it is no panacea for the poor, migration can bring many benefits and this is being recognized in some policy and research circles.

Based on secondary data from Bangladesh, China, Viet Nam and the Philippines, Anh (2003) concludes that migration is a driver of growth and an important route out of poverty with significant positive impacts on people’s livelihoods and well-being. Anh argues that attempts to control mobility will be counterproductive. Afsar (2003) also argues that migration has reduced poverty directly and indirectly in Bangladesh as remittances have expanded the area under cultivation and rural labour markets by making land available for tenancy.

Ping (2003) draws attention to the huge contribution of migrant labour to overall development in China and says “without migrants there would be no Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Shenzhen”. The potential of migration is also attracting attention in Latin America: Andersson (2002) argues that rural-urban migration can bring many benefits to Bolivia where the low population density, poverty and mountainous terrain make it expensive and difficult to provide services in rural areas.

MIGRATION IN INDIA: STATISTICAL FRAMEWORK

In India, permanent shifts of population and workforce co-exist with the circulatory movement of populations between lagging areas and developed regions and between rural and urban areas, mostly being absorbed in the unorganized sector of the economy. According to the 1961 Census, 144. 8 million persons were enumerated at places other than their birth places.  According to the 1971 Census, 166. 8 million persons were counted as migrants.

The number of migrant labour during the 1981 Census rose to 204. 2 million.  According to the 1991 Census 226 million

persons have changed their places of residence within the country. According to the National Commission on Rural Labour (1991) there are more than 10 million circular migrants in the rural areas alone out of which a million are inter-state migrants and 6 million are intra-state migrants.

In 2001, out of the total migrants 91 million were found to be males and the rest 218 females. Thus migrants constitute around 30 percent of the total population, male and female migrants constituting 18 percent and 45 percent of their population respectively.  Of the total migrants, 87 percent were migrants within the state of enumeration while 13 percent were interstate migrants.

Among the male migrants, 79 percent moved within the state of enumeration while 21 percent moved between states. Among females, 90 percent were intrastate migrants and 10 percent were interstate migrants. In all censuses, rural to rural migration stream has been the most important. Females constitute a significantly higher proportion of rural ward migrants mainly on account of marriage. As regards long distance (inter-state) movement in India, a clear sex differential is found from census 2001. Among the male interstate migrants, rural to urban stream emerged as the most prominent accounting for 47 percent. On the other hand, rural to rural has remained the major pattern of female movement, with 36 percent of them migrating from rural to rural areas.

From the largest three or four magnitudes of out-migration proportions of each state, it is clear that majority of the migrants have moved to neighbouring states only. However there are exceptions for this. For Uttar Pradesh, which constitutes 41 percent of all our migrants, migration to Maharashtra accounts for 32

percent even though Maharashtra is not a border state.

Likewise, out migrants from Orissa preferred Gujarat and Maharashtra as the destination even when these states are not Border States. Out-migration to these states made up to 34 percent of total out-migrants from Orissa. A close look at the pattern of each state’s out-migration is as follows. 56 percent of out-migrants from Uttar Pradesh have gone to Maharashtra, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. In the case of Bihar, nearly 50 percent out-migrants have moved to Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

Out-migrants from these two states made up to 70 percent of total out-migrants. More than one-third of Tamil Nadu migrants moved to Karnataka. The rest of the out-migrants have chosen mainly Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. More than three-fourth of out-migrants from Andhra Pradesh have moved to the border states namely, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. For the out-migrants from Rajasthan, destinations are Maharashtra, Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Turning to Kerala, about 48 percent have moved to the neighbouring states, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

However, a slightly more than one-fourth of the out-migrants from Kerala have moved to Maharashtra, which is not a bordering state. From the data, Maharashtra emerges the most favoured destination for migration. Half of the entire interstate migrants have moved to Maharashtra. Gujarat and Haryana are the other preferred destinations with nearly 30 percent of the migrants moving to these states. The three states, thus, attracted 80 percent of all interstate migrants during the intercensal period 1991-2001.

With the scenario of an optimistic economic growth at the national level, an attempt is made to relate the levels of migration of each state with some

social and economic indicators. The following variables have been considered for the preliminary analysis: proportion urban, per capita income, proportion of non agricultural workers, density, economic dependency ratio, average earnings of rural labor, sex ratio, proportion age 15-59 and sex ratio of age15-49. Zero order correlation coefficients of these variables with migration levels is expected to provide some insights on the mechanisms of push pull factors of spatial mobility in India.

The measurement errors in both the sets of variables, socio economic variables as well as migration, cannot be summarily ruled out, although efforts will be made to maximize the reliability. More young Indian men travel to work in construction and urban services in the expanding informal sector. For example studies in areas of Bihar that have experienced a doubling of outmigration rates since the 1970s show that migration is now mainly to urban areas and not to the traditional destinations in irrigated Punjab where work availability has declined (Karan, 2003).

At the same time worsening population pressure and environmental limits have also created a new exodus of people (often entire families) from drought-prone and environmentally fragile areas that form nearly two-thirds of the country (see for instance Mamgain, 2003 on Uttaranchal and Wandschneider and Mishra, 2003 on Orissa). Falling agricultural commodity prices has been a recent trigger (Deshingkar, 2004a). While official statistics may even suggest a decline in migration rates a number of village studies show that mobility has increased tremendously, especially short-term migration and commuting.

For example Rogaly et al. (2002) observe that in excess of 500,000 tribals, Muslims and lower caste people migrate seasonally from five districts in West Bengal to the rice-growing areas of

the state. Deshingkar and Start (2003) found that more than half the households in four out of six study villages in Madhya Pradesh had migrating members. The proportion was as high as 75 % in the most remote and hilly village with infertile soils. In Andhra Pradesh, while average migration rates were lower, the most remote and unirrigated village had 78 % of the households with migrating members.

WHO MIGRATES? 

Female Migration More and more women are migrating for work now and not just as accompanying spouses. This so-called “autonomous female migration” has increased because of a greater demand for female labour in certain services and industries and also because of growing social acceptance of women’s economic independence and mobility. Migration can be an option to escape social control or gender discrimination (Posel, 2003) as well as prejudice in their home community if they pursue socially stigmatized work (ranging from certain manual wage labour to sexual services; cf. Tacoli, 2001).

Regional comparisons show that women’s migration is very high in South America and South-East Asia (Guest, 2003). The employment of women is greatest in the six major export-oriented, labour-intensive industries, which are: electrical machinery, electronics and computer parts; textiles and ready-made garments; chilled, frozen and canned food; precious stones and jewellery; urban garment manufacturing and footwear. The majority of female rural-urban migrants in East and South-East Asia are young and unmarried and the concentration of this group in urban areas is particularly pronounced in the “mega cities” (Guest, 2003).

In India, regional differences in women’s mobility have been noted by Singh (1984 cited in de Haan, 2000) where migration among women in South India is higher than their Northern

sisters who live in a cultural milieu that is similar to West Asian and North African Arab countries. Breman (1996) observed that migrant women in Gujarat carrying out equivalent tasks to migrant men, earned lower wages than the men.

Segmentation of labour markets by ethnic group Segmentation along ethnic lines is mainly to do with traditional skills and ocial networks, and understanding this is essential for the development of support systems that can reach different groups of people with different needs. If one person from a certain caste/tribe/region establishes good connections and finds work in an area then his/her relations and friends soon follow. Gazdar (2003) notes that in Sindh, Pakistan, a large proportion of the arid-area migrants are people from socially marginalized non-Muslim groups such as the Bheels and the Kohlis. Similar observations have been made by other authors (e. . Skeldon, 2003) where there is a strong association between caste, tribe etc. and the kind of work found in the migratory labour market.

Age profile of migrants Internal migration is an activity undertaken primarily by young adults all over the world. For example Hare (1999) finds that the age groups of 16-25 and 26-35 are most likely to migrate in China. Leaving one’s group of origin at a certain moment in the personal life-cycle might also be seen as a “rite of passage” by certain ethnic groups.

Young people who do not migrate at a certain time in their life can be exposed to ridicule by their community (Tacoli, 2001). Child labour and child migration are however, widespread in South Asia: Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of child labourers in the country, many of whom

work in seed cotton fields and travel there from long distances. Child migration is also widespread in Karnataka where young teenagers travel to work in restaurants in Bangalore and Mumbai. Unmarried girls are employed as domestic servants throughout South Asia.

The literature on migration suggests that poorer villages tend to be the “sending” areas and urbanized locations or richer villages (irrigated and/or well connected) tend to be the “receiving” areas (Dev and Evenson, 2003; Kundu, 2003). However, the 1970s Indian Village Studies project of the Institute of Development Studies (Connel et al. , 1977; Lipton, 1980) found that unequal, and not the poorest, villages had the highest rates of out-migration. The poorest usually cannot migrate because they do not have enough labour or the resources required for start-up investments on tools and other assets, transport, food and shelter.

Poorer people with surplus labour in the household but few other assets often migrate through labour contractors and intermediaries. Labour contractors provide labourers with cash advances which are used to purchase the essentials for migration. For example, in drought-prone areas of north-western Andhra Pradesh, potential migrants are given a substantial cash advance (roughly Rs 5,000) by contractors or employers, six months before the migration season begins, to buy bulls or repair their bullock carts.

These are needed for the sugar-cane cutting work that migrants undertake in the irrigated areas of the state. The advance is cut from their wages and is usually paid off in a month. Obtained from NSSO 5th Round data, the above table dissects the vast difference between stated reasons and labour participation into different streams of migration.

CAUSES OF MIGRATION 

Research by Ghosh and Harriss-White (2002) in Birbhum

and Bardhaman districts of West Bengal suggests that paddy producers are facing heavy losses as prices fell sharply by over 50 % since 1999 caused by the reduction of subsidies as well as the de-restriction of inter-state transport which has allowed cheaper paddy to come in from Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.

A majority of migrant workers find work in the informal sector. This is what the “over-urbanization” theory of Hoselitz (1957) predicts: migrants supply far more labour than the formal sector can absorb and labour is absorbed into the informal sector which then leads to low productivity and limited prospects for exiting poverty. However, it has been observed in a number of different contexts that most migrants never “graduate” to the formal sector, by contrast with the widely cited Harris and Todaro model (1970).

There is also compelling evidence that migrants can escape poverty even when they have remained in the informal sector. Deshingkar and Start (2003) document accumulative migration streams in both informal farm and non-farm work which have allowed numerous poor people in Andhra Pradesh to improve their standard of living. Papola (1981) noted in the case of Ahmedabad city in India that although a majority of the migrants were in informal sector employment, their urban earnings after migration were double their rural earnings.

While obviously economic opportunities are key for labour migrants, field studies tend to reveal other factors like family structure, which shapes both the urgency and limitations to migrate. Larger families tend to have a greater need to diversify resources, and the ability to maintain labour inputs when part of the family migrates. Age is key, of course, in terms of employment possibilities

but also in terms of a rite of passage.

Jan Breman (1985) has emphasized the forced nature of labour migration, particularly in western India where capitalist production and old exploitative socio-economic relations lead to extreme forms of deprivation. Conditions of bondage in migration processes amongst Adivasisi in western India are described by David Mosse et al. (2002). These forms of migration are usually organized through labour contractors, who often are money-lenders in areas of origins.