Migration : Types, Causes and Consequences
• Migration has been an integral part and a very important factor in redistributing population over time
and space.
• India has witnessed the waves of migrants coming to the country from Central and West Asia and also from Southeast Asia.
Migration
• Migration was recorded beginning from the first Census of India conducted in 1881.
• In the Census of India migration is enumerated on two bases:
→ place of birth, if the place of birth is different from the place of enumeration (known as life-time migrant);
→ place of residence, if the place of last residence is different from the place of enumeration (known as migrant by place of last residence).
Streams of Migration
• Migration is of two types: Internal (within country) and international migration (in between countries).
• Under internal migration there are four streams:
→ Rural to Rural (R – R)
→ Rural to Urban (R – V)
→ Urban to urban (U – U)
→ Urban to Rural (U – R)
• In India, during 2011, out of 455.0 million migrants, enumerated on the basis of the last residence, 141.9 million had changed their place of residence in the last ten years.
• Females predominate the short distance rural to rural migration in both the types mostly related to marriage.
• Males dominate the rural to urban inter-state migration due to economic reasons.
Spatial Variation in Migration
• Some states like Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat and Haryana attract migrants from other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, etc.
Causes of Migration
• There are two categories: push and pull factors.
→ Push factors: These force people to leave their place of origin or residence mainly due to poverty, high population pressure on the land, lack of basic infrastructural facilities like health care, education, natural disasters such as, flood, drought, cyclonic storms etc.
→ Pull factors: These attract people from backward/inconvenient areas from rural to urban places for better job opportunities, availability of regular work, relatively higher wages education, better health facilities etc.
• Work and employment have remained the main cause for male migration (26 per cent) while it is only 2.3 per cent for the females.
• About 67 percent of females move out from their parental houses following their marriage except in Meghalaya. In comparison to these marriage migration of the male, is only 4 per cent in the country.
Consequences of Migration
• Migration is a response to the uneven distribution of opportunities over space. It creates both benefits and problems for the areas, people migrate from and migrate to.
• Consequences can be observed in economic, social, cultural, political and demographic terms.
Economic Consequences
• Remittances from the international migrants are one of the major sources of foreign exchange.
• Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu receive very significant amount from their international migrants.
• Remittances are mainly used for food, repayment of debts, treatment, marriages, children’s education, agricultural inputs, construction of houses, etc.
• For thousands of the poor villages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, etc. remittance works as life blood for their economy.
• Migration from rural areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha to the rural areas of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh accounted for the success of their green revolution strategy for agricultural development.
• Besides this, unregulated migration to the metropolitan cities of India has caused overcrowding.
Demographic Consequences
• Migration leads to the redistribution of the population within a country and the cause of imbalance in sex ratio in the place of origin and destination of the migrants.
• Age and sex selective out migration from the rural areas have adverse effects on the rural demographic structure.
Social Consequences
• Migrants act as agents of social change. The new ideas related to new technologies, family planning, girl’s education, etc. get diffused from urban to rural areas through them.
• It leads to intermixing of people from diverse cultures.
• It also has serious negative consequences such as anonimity, which creates social vacuum and sense of dejection among individuals.
Environmental Consequences
• Overcrowding of people due to rural-urban migration has put pressure on the existing social and physical infrastructure in the urban areas which ultimately leads to unplanned growth of urban settlement and formation of slums shanty colonies.
• Due to over-exploitation of natural resources, cities are facing the acute problem of depletion of ground water, air pollution, disposal of sewage and management of solid wastes.
Others
• Migration affects the status of women directly or indirectly. In the rural areas, male selective out migration leaving their wives behind puts extra physical as well mental pressure on the women.
• The advanced skill market has become global and the developed nations are hiring the trained ones from the poor countries.
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History – Themes
in Indian History |
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Pol
Science – Contemporary World Politics |
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– Politics
in India since Independence |
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Geography – Indian
People and Economy |
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– Fundamental of Human Geography |
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Chapter 1: - Population: Distribution, Density, Growth
and Composition |
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Chapter 12: - Geographical Perspective on Selected
Issues and Problems |
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