Migration: An Outcome of the Gene of Vulnerability

Abstract

This paper seeks to look into the element of population study of migration arising out of the various social, cultural, economic, religious and political reasons.  The contemporary labour migration  has  created  a  huge  potential  towards  strengthening  the  global  economy.  In economic literature, we commonly refer to this human migration as a movement of human capital or labour forces.

A well-known  approach  in  explaining migration  is  to  order  them  into  ‘push'  and  ‘pull'  factors.  The former  describes  the  degree  of dissatisfaction  of  the  rural  people/developing  countries  in  their  present  condition  and  the latter explains the measure of response to the opportunities of the city/developed countries.

The purpose of this paper is to look into the common causes of migration, chiefly in the developing  countries  and  the  vulnerability  due  to  which  it  takes  place.  The paper summarises the intricacies of migration studies. It deals with the general nature and causes of migration which is followed by a diagrammatic representation of the causes for rural to urban migration. The characteristics of migration to West Bengal from the other states in India are observed through the Census data in a tabular form.

The paper also looks at the reasons behind rural to urban migration across countries and states and finds them to be broadly dissimilar. Findings in the paper show  that the  intra-state  migration  is  much  greater  than  that  of  inter-state migration. Also, women migration within as well as from outside the state is the highest due to ‘marriage'. It is further observed in the paper that the highest Rural-Urban migration to West Bengal has been from Bihar followed by Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa.

Rural industrialisation is required to stop the individuals from migrating arbitrarily from their places of origin to the cities; while dispersed urbanisation is mandatory in order to extend the scope of opportunities available to migrants in cities.