Regardless of economic class or place of origin, migration is synonymous with opportunity. The question of whether migration is something people are forced into or whether is a choice people make has intrigued researchers and academics; in my opinion, it isn’t an either/or situation.
Looking beyond aspiration and opportunity rhetoric in rural-urban migration
Mukta Naik on December 18th, 2014
Expanding Social spaces for women: Arpita Banerjee (NIUA)
Aritra Chakrabarty on December 17th, 2014
What does Migration mean? Let us start from the entry point of what migration mean to women. It is well documented in numerous migration literatures that migration is mainly a response to the work/job opportunities available in the new place (Basu 2001; Dayal and Karan 2003) and it has enhanced the economic and the social status of the migrant as well as his/her family (Brody 2006). I would argue on what migration has actually brought to a woman.
Migrating towards freedom: Debadutta Club
Aritra Chakrabarty on December 16th, 2014
It is well-established fact that migrant labour is associated with informal sector, working in unrecognized units without any social safety net. Including in the definition of organized sector those units employing 20 workers and more, 85 percent of total labour force would be categorized informal. Although we have the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act (UWSSA) 2008, no comprehensive scheme has been implemented yet. This account represented here highlights the hazards and hardships of a migrant labour, which forms a major portion of the informal sector labour force.
A Journey for Livelihood: PEPUS
Aritra Chakrabarty on December 15th, 2014
Migration is a strategy for the marginal population to survive and sustain their livelihoods. Most of the times it is associated with distress while it can also be viewed as opportunistic in nature. PEPUS has been associated with migrant workers, providing them with the safety net and ensuring their rights that provide a condition of minimum livelihood.
Making the migrant ‘Saksham’-MMC’s success story
Aritra Chakrabarty on November 13th, 2014
Migrant construction workers living in Mumbai are one of the most vulnerable communities of city’s urban poor. Maharashtra has a share of 10.75 percent of construction workers out of a total 3.7 million migrant workers. Mumbai (suburban) alone has 1.2 million migrant workers, out of which 9.12 percent are construction workers. Considering the fact that majority of the migrant workers are in the informal sector and thus outside the purview of administration, these numbers represent a minuscule share of a more humongous group.
Construction industry is a health hazard
Aritra Chakrabarty on November 6th, 2014
Construction industry is labor intensive in India, because labor is cheap and available in abundance. The industry is one of the biggest employers (third largest) in India, with seven percent contribution to GDP. According to the Planning Commission’s XI-Plan document, employment in the construction sector in India has witnessed a steady increase from 14.6 million in 1995 to nearly 31.5 million in 2005. The figure stands at 45 million today, majority of which consists of migrants.
Mobility across gender-findings from NSS 64th round survey
Aritra Chakrabarty on October 14th, 2014
Mobility from one place to another is an important part of human existence. Migration in that sense is viewed as an integral part of overall economic and individualistic human development. Though social, cultural, political, personal and natural forces have a bearing on migration, viewing it as an economic phenomenon receives special attention. People may be motivated to change their place of residence because of lack of employment opportunities in the area where they are residing or in the hope of finding better opportunities elsewhere. In order to understand the dynamics of migration phenomena detailed nationwide surveys have been undertaken periodically to highlight the various facets of internal migration and the bearing it has on society.
Displaced from habitat: Tribals of Chhattisgarh
Aritra Chakrabarty on September 23rd, 2014
Migration from Chhattisgarh has been primarily driven by astute poverty conditions and inherent political instability. Drought prone areas of the state have recorded steady flow of men and women to other regions. Similarly, the presence of Naxalists has added to further problems for the population, majority of which, in some regions is Scheduled Tribes. They are caught in the crossfire between the government and the Naxals and have to forcibly move out in search for alternative livelihood opportunities. Among all ages, youth migration is quite high in the state, primarily for employment opportunities and education prospects.
How a drought shapes the choice of livelihood
Aritra Chakrabarty on August 26th, 2014
There are over 25,000 (female) sex workers in the city of Hyderabad, higher than any other city in India. Of them, 60 percent are women who migrated from villages and were forced to enter the sex trade as they had no other earning alternative.
Women and children are forced to migrate to the city from districts (names) after facing successive droughts. Initially they survive on the streets through begging and petty jobs. They form the invisible class of population, most vulnerable to exploitation. Homeless migrants thrive as rag pickers, daily wage workers, domestic workers, etc. most of them are intra-state migrants. Drought is a classic push factor that affects a number of rural people. The rural economy already characterized by surplus labour, scarcity of arable land and small size of land holdings, drought conditions exacerbate the distressed livelihood further. Nearly two-thirds of the arable land in India is rain fed and low potential, and this is where the effects of drought are most severe. Natural drought is exacerbated by manmade drought: groundwater exploitation in western and southern India has reached unsustainable limits. A majority of the villages in the dry areas stretching across eastern Maharashtra, eastern Karnataka, western Andhra Pradesh, and southern Madhya Pradesh have very high rates of migration.
Treating urbanization as complementary in nature
Aritra Chakrabarty on July 18th, 2014
Projections released by United Nations in its 2014 revision of World Urbanization Prospects report predict increase in urban population to 65 percent in 2050 from 54 percent presently. This implies an additional 2.5 billion people living in urban areas by 2050, highlighting the need of urban planning agenda and greater attention needs to be laid on smaller cities where half of all people currently reside.
Projections indicate that urbanization combined with overall growth will contribute to the 2.5 billion jump, with 37 per cent of the projected growth in India, which currently has the largest rural population, China and Nigeria, in that order. The report specifies diversification of policies to plan and manage the spatial distribution of population across rural-urban centres and explicit policy for internal migration, which will be a major contributor to urbanization in the coming decades.
