Rural Labour Migration: A Case Study in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

India is the second most populous country in the world, having more than one billion populations and a huge population of about 73 per cent living in rural areas in very poor conditions. They do not have adequate income to fulfill their needs. Even though the area-wise major reasons for migration among the male and female migrants are similar; the extent of migration differs markedly. For instance, in the case of rural males, 43.7 per cent have migrated for work/employment, which is only 14.17 percent among the urban males, while 82.67 per cent of the rural females have migrated for their marriage, which is only 26.61 per cent in the case of their urban counterparts. This also suggests that other reasons like business and education cause only a negligible impact on migration of the people in the country, though clearly the share of both reasons is higher among the male migrants than in the case of the female migrants and similarly, the proportion is higher among the urban migrants than that of rural migrants. In this context this study explains based on the field work carried out in the study area. It argues that much of the development literature makes the false assumption that sedentary patterns in society are the norm, instead making the case that migration is often the rule, rather than the exception. It concludes that migration should be seen as just one of the livelihood strategies open to households, that it is often combined with other strategies, and that it is frequently a two-way process in which migrants maintain close links with their areas of origin over a much longer period than is frequently assumed.