Seasonal Migration for Livelihoods in India: Coping, Accumulation and Exclusion
Priya Deshingkar; Daniel Start (2003)
How does seasonal migration affect poverty? Who gets to migrate, and what factors regulate access to migration opportunities? This Overseas Development Institute Working Paper sythesises primary data collected from villages in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India.
The data lend support to a more differentiated view of migration than generally assumed. Migration can be a crisis survival strategy or an accumulative option; people from poor areas can be on positive migration pathways, and vice-versa. Specifically, the study finds that:
- Migration patterns are determined by people’s access to resources, the institutional, market and policy environments, and by intra-household and social relations; migration options are increasingly open to women.
- Migration involves positive and negative factors: there are large costs to searching for work and maintaining links, and risks of cheating, accidents, and to the children involved. However, migrant work, though often hard and in poor conditions, can be well paid, and can bring new skills
Policy implications of the study include that:
- The mainstream view that migration should be curbed by creating village employment does not address positive outcomes, or the fact that meanwhile migrants have no entitlement to livelihood support systems outside their home areas.
- Public and policy action to address the exclusion of migrants from health, education and other social protection, and concerted action to ensure minimum wages, injury compensation, and freedom from bondage and sexual exploitation are needed.
|
|
|
