The Pros And Cons Of Seasonal Migration

Seasonal migration has long been a practice for improving livelihoods in rural areas, with some male members of the family leaving the village for part of the year to look for paid work. In the last few decades, however, there has been growing incidence of ‘distress seasonal migration’. This forces the entire family to leave home in search of work in order to survive. Children, who have no choice but to accompany their parents, drop out of schools and are forced into hard labour . The annual migration cycles overlap with the annual school calendar. Evidence indicates that such migrations are large and growing, and the number of children below 14years involved may be close to 9 million . (Smita,2008).

Usually, there is no school available for the children to attend near their parent’s worksite and even if there is parents are not so keen on sending their children to school. Also, an observation done in a school which is on the outskirts of

Report says that the central and the state government don’t have data with respect to children of seasonal migrant. Lack of data in this respect poses a problem for the government to plan any programme or policies for them. (Smita, 2008)

A paper by Mohammad Talib written in 1992 on ideology, curriculum and class construction, attempts to represent the experience of working class children in a school located in an urban village on the southern outskirts of New Delhi. He has done this research through observation of classroom practices, going through the various textbook of different classes and taking interview of teachers and the students. (Talib, 1992)

The few key things he found from his research which would help us in our research problem:

• Parents were indifferent towards the education of children. Since most of the parents were illiterate they could hardly contribute towards their children's