ABSTRACT
Distress migration of seasonal character due to natural disasters, forced displacement and systematic lack of livelihoods is quite common in many areas of India. Arresting distress migration has been one of the focal themes of social security programs in India. At the same time, migration has also been viewed as a ‘routine livelihood strategy’ which enables poorer households to attain consumption smoothing, repayment of debt and crucial investments in physical and human capital. Some authors have argued that the current policy approach is biased towards stopping migration from rural areas by supporting rural livelihoods; there is no recognition of the fact that migration might occur due to voluntary choice by households in search of higher income or for accumulative purposes. Our survey in two districts of Western Odisha, long associated with distress migration, show that there is heterogeneity in the pattern of migration. We argue that the decision to migrate and the nature of migration show heterogeneity because underlying household decisions to migrate might be differently motivated depending on household characteristics which determine the gains and costs of migration. The household-level information for migrant and non-migrant families – provided by our survey – helped us to model the migration decision of the households as one of choosing between single member migration and multiple migrants where the latter category also includes family units. As family migrants are asset-poor on average compared to single migrants in our sample, we surmise that incentives to migrate are likely to differ across these two classes. Our results show that labour constraints are binding for the single migrants while family migrants are affected significantly by their wealth stock. We also find that existing public welfare programs like MGNREGA might be inadequate to reduce the relative returns from migration and new initiatives at ensuring education for all children through RTE provisions may not have had significant impact on migration decisions.
