ABSTRACT
The construction and analysis of population sex ratios has played an important role in guiding gender studies and the feminist movement in India. The literature on India has focused mainly on child sex ratios in order to cut out the effect of sex-selective migration at higher-age groups. As a consequence, the sex ratio migration linkages in India have rarely been explored. Male-dominated migration streams for instance, raise the female-male sex ratios in source regions and depress sex ratios in destination regions. The converse is true for female-dominated migration streams. The chapter illustrates how population sex ratios can provide valuable information on migration patterns, networks and trends, in regions with highly sex-selective migration streams. The chapter shows the significance of missing men, especially in regions covering over 200 million people of India. It focuses on India where work-related migration tends to be extremely sex selective and creates a situation of missing men in the source regions.
