ABSTRACT
The literature on rural-urban migration constructs the so-called rural left behind as children, wives and elderly parents who stay behind in the village when men migrate for work. Based on the ethnographic village study of Tejam, this chapter makes a case for questioning existing categories, saying that those who are in the truest sense of the word ‘left behind’ in the village are not the family members of migrants but the young unemployed men (and other members in their households) who do not leave for work. These ‘non-movers’ neither benefit from cash incomes earned in the village nor through migration, but linger around the village without much prospect of productive employment. Intergenerational replication of social and economic disadvantage is visible in processes of non-migration, as villagers with lower social and economic capital remain in the village with their families, whilst more capable villagers leave. The non-migration and unemployment of young men needs to be understood in the light of existing macro-structures of widespread lack of employment opportunities, but also in light of men’s attitudes towards agricultural work and their choice of ‘timepass’.
