Cause And Consequences Of Migration

The studies on migration of human beings have received attention of scholars from multi disciplinary fields. Economist, sociologists, geographers and more recently demographers have shown keen interest in human migration. The economists have shown their interest in the study of volume and growth of migration and changes therein over time and also the cause and consequence of this movement on the economy. The present study is under taken in the backdrop of theories and empirical studies on migration. This part presents a survey of major studies on internal migration.

Studies based on internal migration

One of the earlier studies which focused on the causes of migration and the remedial measures to prevent its ill effects was done by Das Gupta

Some of the comparable studies are Joshi (1989) on urban Karnataka, Choudhari (1991) analyzing the migration of rural labour in Samasthipr district of Bihar.

Kundu (1999) found that rural labourers will be ready to take risk of migrating to urban area when the travelling cost is less or minimum. The author highlighted the relationship between rural-urban migration and travelling cost. When the travelling cost is high, the workers become less interested in migration.

Duraisamy and Narasimhan (2000) examine the urban to rural remittances behaviour of the migrants in the urban informal sector using a primary survey data from the Chennai metropolitan area. The study presents the theories of remittances and goes on to the test the implied hypothesis empirically based on two factors (family ties and inheritance) which are considered to be the key determinants of remittance.

Zachariah and Rajan (2001) examined the push factors for migration in Kerala. The study examined the economic and non economic factors which pushed for migration. The study found that there was a negative relationship between migration and economic

Though still an emerging process, the number of migrant workers, particularly from states in the North India, employed in all sectors of Kerala's economy is substantial. The findings of the study suggested that the phenomenon of large scale in-migration to Kerala was one of the results of so called Kerala Model of Development and the out-migration it facilitated. The mismatch between the supply of labour and demand for it resulted in large scale unemployment. The study showed that Kerala is different from other Indian states because Kerala majority of unemployed were educated or semi skilled. According to the conventional labour market theories, high unemployment should have pushed money wages down. But the paradoxical picture of Kerala showed that high unemployment co-existing with high wages. Major findings of his study are;

• Kerala boasts of several progressive laws to protect the rights of workers, they seemed to exist only on paper.

• Dual system of wages exists in the construction section in Kerala. Though local workers put in less hours of work, they are paid higher wages than migrant workers.

• The expenditure pattern of the migrants showed that they tried to save as much as possible by keeping their expenses on accommodation,