Economic Migration

Migration from one region to another for the purpose of seeking employment or better financial conditions is called economic migration.  It is important to highlight the word economic in order to distinguish it from the other kinds of migration which may include – forced migration, migration for religious reasons, for better natural environment.

Economic migration is put specially under the lens because of the caused demographic changes across the regions and countries. Its causes can be attributed to many factors and similarly, it influences many a policy worldwide. For example, some countries may impose migration and visa restrictions to prohibit the people from outside to enter their countries in search of work. Such protectionist measures are put in place in order to save domestic workforce from unemployment and low wages.

The factors that cause economic migration across the globe may be listed as follows:

1.      1. Absence of means of employment across one’s native country cause major migration patterns throughout the world.

2.    2. Decline in traditional means of earning such as agriculture, handicraft also causes loss of employment and hence, migration.

3.       3. Lucrative opportunities in regions other than native region.

Note that causes 1-3 and 2-3 act in conjunction with each other as push from one side and pull from the other, as such the examples of economic migration shall have them in hyphenation.

Principally, the process of economic migration can be categorized into two sets:

1.      1. External Migration

2.      2. Internal Migration

External Migration

External (economic) migration involves crossing a country’s boundaries in search of (or a better) livelihood. Change of one’s country induces environmental, cultural, social and economic changes in one’s life and into the country of immigration. This calls for critical assessment of various forces influencing economic migrations out of and into a country.

One important issue in recent years has been decrement in the number of domestic jobs in various developed countries. Such cases exist in various developed nations such as USA and European countries. The overall increment in EU’s population was 85% in 2005 alone, with 78% people migrating with working visas. The service sector inflation being extremely high in these places, the organizations tend to hire individuals from outside to perform the jobs. For the jobs that can be done from distant places, the tasks are outsourced while for direct jobs immigrant labor is hired. The Mexicans and the people from South-East Asia form a major fraction of these work forces in US. Similarly, in a lot of European countries especially Britain, people from South Asia have been hired. This, apart from unemployment, causes resentment in a country’s native population. In popular immigration destinations like France, UK and USA unemployment caused by jobs outsourced to immigrants is a major political issue.

To tighten this process, the developed countries generally introduce changes in their visa policies. For some sectors like IT, the policies have been specially drafted keeping in mind the needs of the industry and provisions have been left for expurgation. A class – H1B is for professional level jobs that require a minimum of bachelor’s degree in a specific academic field. In addition the employee must have a degree or the equivalent of a degree through education and experience. In order to obtain an H-1B visa, the employer must show that it will pay the higher of the prevailing local wage or the wage it pays other U.S. citizens who have similar education and experience. The employer is not required to prove there are no American workers available to perform the work. However, some economists saw H-1B expansion as an assault on the American middle class that benefited the wealthy and made it impossible to maintain traditional American standards of living, or provide incentives to improve productivity as rapidly as nations like Japan with more restrictive immigration policies.

The companies who hired workers on H-1B visas often argue that the U.S. lacks enough skilled American workers to do the specific work needed by the company. Many economists argue that hiring these foreign workers provides more benefits to the U.S., and otherwise the recruiting companies would simply offshore the entire operation. It was claimed this would likely prove worse for the U.S. economy as a whole, because in the first scenario foreign national workers living in the United States would at least spend money in the United States, while the multi-national corporations that would purportedly export the jobs to overseas locations would probably not pass down as much of the savings to the U.S. consumer who purchased from them.

Additionally the policies of the government are also specific towards particular countries such as Mexico. Most of the workmen coming from Mexico are unskilled labor and work cheaply in the heavily burdened service sector of America. As such a lot of jobs in the southern states are lost to immigrants giving rise to nationalist sentiments. The forest-jobs such as tree felling, logging, transportation is filled up with Canadians from north who are wooed by the attractive higher wages then Canada.

Internal Migration

Internal migration is now recognized as an important factor in influencing social and economic development, especially in developing countries. According to census 2001, the total population of India is 1028 million consisting of 532 million males and 496 million females. India is geographically divided into 28 states and 7 Union Territories. There is a tremendous variation in the aggregate population size across the state. It varies from 0.54 million in Sikkim to 166.2 million in Uttar Pradesh. In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constitute about 30% of the total population of the country. This figure indicates an increase of around 37 percent from census 1991 which recorded 226 million migrants. (The final statistics from Census 2011 are yet to be released).

The reasons for migration have been classified broadly as – work/employment, business, education, marriage, moved at birth, moved with family and others. Of these reasons, moved at birth, moved with family and others constitute a negligible amount of people. Marriage as a reason has come only recently in prominence with inter-state, inter-cultural boundaries being let more relaxed. Some special cases like Haryana having no brides and girls from north-east, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand being brought over deserve a special mention. Other than these, economic migrations – work/employment, business and post educational together form a major fraction of the migrating population. Additionally, it is observed that employment among males and marriage among females are the main reasons for migration.

A close look at the pattern of each state’s out-migration is as follows. 56 percent of out-migrants from Uttar Pradesh have gone to Maharashtra, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh. In the case of Bihar, nearly 50 percent out-migrants have moved to Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Out-migrants from these two states made up to 70 percent of total out-migrants. More than one-third of Tamil Nadu migrants moved to Karnataka. The rest of the out-migrants have chosen mainly Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. More than three-fourth of out-migrants from Andhra Pradesh have moved to the border states namely, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. For the out-migrants from Rajasthan, destinations are Maharashtra, Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Turning to Kerala, about 48 percent have moved to the neighboring states, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. However, a slightly more than one-fourth of the out-migrants from Kerala have moved to Maharashtra, which is not a bordering state.

Overall it is observed that majority of the out-migrants have moved to the bordering states. Nevertheless, it is observed that migration to non bordering states has also been significant. Here, one has to remember the enormous variations in the geographical sizes of Indian states. With the distance covered by an inter-district migrant in state like Rajasthan, a migrant in smaller states can reach another state, thus qualifying as interstate migration.

From the flow matrix, Maharashtra emerges the most favored destination for migration. Half of the entire interstate migrants have moved to Maharashtra. Gujarat and Haryana are the other preferred destinations with nearly 30 percent of the migrants moving to these states. The three states, thus, attracted 80 percent of all interstate migrants during the inter-censal period. Surprisingly, Punjab despite being in a high income category attracts less immigrants since the 80's. Possible reasons might include automation of agriculture and food processing industries and separatist movement.

Bengaluru

As IT boomed, Bengaluru became the new Bombay; a magnet for migrants from around the country. Migration fuelled almost half of Bengaluru’s phenomenal population growth of 4.1 million in 1991 to almost 5.7 million by 2001; an increase of more than 30 percent. Concurrent with the influx of skilled labor from urban areas around the country was the expansion of an informal economy through in-migration of people from rural areas in Karnataka. The latter often joined the service economy, working as barbers, household helps, cooks, drivers, tea ladies, construction workers, and so on. Of the city’s total population, 1.2 million are migrants from other parts of Karnataka, and some 800,000 are from outside the state.

This ‘economic boom’ that acts as a magnet for the people is also a litmus test for the infrastructure of the city. "The bad condition of the roads, traffic jams, and consequently the long commutes has led to a drop in productivity for IT companies," is the popular perception. The number of flyovers, bridges, roads is on a rise along with the consumer-malls but the public spaces are shrinking. The city that was once called ‘Garden city’ may soon be choking for breath. This has also resulted in real-estate inflation which directly affects other sectors as well including basic necessities such as food. One argument against the ‘loss of productivity argument’ is that the number of working hours for employees has stayed the same causing no loss in productivity. 

Bihar

Looking into the different peripheries of Bihar’s contribution, what came very evidently was the robust industrialization growth due to cheap labor migration, at different locations like Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, to name a few. Due to insufficient agricultural incentives, farmers have been influenced by their urban counterparts and have migrated to developing metropolitans and cities, in order to suffice their urge to enjoy the same comfort and better living conditions. The concrete structures, the skyscrapers and the infrastructural boom, are to some extent blessed by the hard-work and efforts of these migrants. Moreover, if one considers the skilled labor community, in the private sector or Govt. undertakings, one would find Bihar’s omnipresence across the phyla.

With Nitish Kumar on the scene and again against the incumbency, things are bound to change for Bihar and rest of the India. As major industrial hubs are being set with socio-economic development alongside, the immigrant labor shall come back and the exodus shall reverse. This is going to cause severe shortage of working hands across India. Keynesian model says that this will increase the service sector costs along a steep slope. This peculiar model shows that drop in immigration numbers can not only dampen progress but affect certain other economic parameters like supply side inflation.

Internationally and nationally, several human right organizations have stood against the anti-immigration policies. The freedom of movement is recognized as a civil right, the movement being within the international borders. As civil rights activist Jacob Appel has written - "Treating human beings differently, simply because they were born on the opposite side of a national boundary, is hard to justify under any mainstream philosophical, religious or ethical theory." The rather sad deduction from the migratory data is the selective pocket development across the countries of the world. With time, the differences between the haves and have-nots have increased exponentially. Immigration is an individual’s attempt to overcome this difference what should have been done by the state.