Migration from rural areas: the evidence from village studies
Connell, J.; Dasgupta, B.; Laishley, R.; Lipton, M.
IDS Discussion Paper, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University 39: 67
1974
Document Number: 456904
This study is divided into three parts. It first considers the types of village likely to have a large source of migrants - the impact of economic and social characteristics, educational levels and opportunities, and available destinations. In each case, the attributes of migrant villagers as well as of high-migration villages are considered; the fact that the latter have much more explanatory power, in general, than the former, and indeed tend to cause them, provides some justification for this technique of inter-village comparison. In the second part, the three main forms of impact of migrants on the village and its households are examined through the readjustments of population and farmwork caused by their absence; through remittances, both ways; and through the migrants' behaviour and expectations on return. The third part consists of a cross-sectional case-study of the results of about 40 Indian village surveys, from four agro-economic research centres, containing roughly comparable data on migrants. The present study already contains a good deal of evidence on the two-way interactions between migration and labour utilization.