19 Madridge J Behav Soc Sci. Volume 1 Issue 1
Madridge
Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Research Article Open Access
Aspects of Human migration in 21st-Century India
Kumar V*
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India
Article Info
*Corresponding author:
Vikramendra Kumar
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Delhi School of Economics
University of Delhi
Delhi
India
Email: Bardhan.vikramendra@gmail.com
doi: 10.18689/mjbss.2017-104
Received: September 25, 2017
Accepted: November 11, 2017
Published: November 17, 2017
Citation: Kumar V*. Aspects of Human
migration in 21st-Century India. Madridge
J Behav Soc Sci. 2017: 1(1): 19-31.
Copyright: © 2017 Kumar V. This work is
licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
Published by Madridge Publishers
Abstract
The migrating man suffers harrowing experiences, he works hard, struggling to save
something to send home to his family, but is caught in the vicious cycle of staying in the
city to find a job and doing a job in order to continue staying in the city. Since rural-to-
urban migration has been particularly male-selective and further more the pattern
seems to be “rich student, poor worker”. But we have little information on the
consequences of male migration on the family in the village. We do not know how male
migration affects the structure of roles, division of labour between the sexes or the
forms of dominance in the village production system. There is little data to show how
women face the situation created by the absence of males within the family and in the
larger community. Changes in labour demands, the increasing vulnerability of women,
the widening access to developmental and political processes, the conflicting social
demands and the economic compulsions may all be critical factors affecting the lives of
such migrating man. While we have some idea about the economic and social
deprivations of these men, we have little knowledge about the precise extent of
exploitation and suffering they undergo, or about the views they have on their situation.
This paper is an attempt to review the wide range of literature concerning migration in
India.
Keywords: Migration, change, development, exploitation, social deprivation, economic
compulsions
Introduction
Rural India is still floating towards Cities. Migration from one state to another within
India is mainly from Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madya Pradesh. Here is a
representative overview of migration from different states of India and persons migrating
to other parts of the country. It is both seasonal and non-seasonal within India. The
seasonal migration is mostly by weavers, brick makers and rice-go down workers
(unloading rice from Lorries to depots and vice-versa). The non-seasonal migration is
mainly by washermen, shoe-makers, hawkers (going from house to house), kerosene
sellers, rickshaw drivers, fruit & vegetable wallas, railway-station porters, and employees
of the Food Corporation of India, of other important wholesale food stockers, and of the
Assam Electricity Board (e.g. helping repair electricity-line poles). These migrants live
mostly without family in male groups and lead a very simple life, keeping in view their
motive to earn money and send it to their family members living in Bihar, where some
of that money is used, for instance, to build family houses. On many occasions, particularly
for religious festivals or for the engagement or marriage of a family member, the migrant
workers come back home. Since the 1960s, a number of major developments in global
migration patterns have placed the phenomenon at the heart of international politics.
First, the scale of movements has increased exponentially.