ABSTRACT
Tribal community practices and cultures, particularly the lack of traditional restrictions on women's work and labour, have indeed been a significant factor in bringing larger proportions of tribal women into more mobile forms of labour in comparison to other social groups in India. The specific tribal features of seasonal migration are at the same time inextricably linked to the reconfiguration of land tenures/ownership and agrarian relations in the Jungle Mahals during the colonial period. With the application of a more nuanced typology of migration, some of the distinguishing aspects of tribal women's migration that are only hinted at in the macrosurveys came out very sharply in the Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS) surveys. They showed that the most distinctive feature of adivasi women's labour migration is their concentration in short term and circulatory migration. One of the distinctive features of tribal labour migration streams has been the high participation of women.
