How Caste Impacts Migration And Its Benefits
People from disadvantaged caste migrate to the cities for better job opportunities but it seldom improves things.
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Poverty and lack of opportunity in their hometowns drove 93 million Indians from disadvantaged castes and tribes in 2011 to migrate to other areas within their states in the hope of securing education or employment.
However, they continue to face social segregation, labor market discrimination and barriers to accessing the most basic services, finds an analysis of Census data and research studies by India Migration Now, a Mumbai-based non-profit.
Internal migration, both within a state and across states in India, improves households’ socioeconomic status, and benefits both the region that people migrate to and where they migrate from, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2019. Remittances can help reduce poverty in the migrants’ places of origin.
But scheduled castes (SC) – castes considered ‘lower’ in the social hierarchy – and scheduled tribes (ST) – indigenous tribal populations – benefited less from migration as social discrimination continued to impact them in the places they migrated to, research shows.
About 16 percent of the total intra-state migrants in India belong to the SCs and 8 percent to the STs, almost equal to their share in the total population, as per data from Census 2011. This proportion has remained constant since 2001, when SCs made up 15.7 percent and STs 8 percent of intra-state migrants.
Exclusionary government policies often push migrants, from all social groups, to the fringes of cities that have limited civic infrastructure and municipal facilities, which makes migrants prone to poor health and living conditions, as IndiaSpend reported in October 2019.
The impact of such policies on migrants from the SCs and STs is greater, as those belonging to these groups are also some of the poorest in the country, shows an analysis of data from the government’s national sample survey on expenditure in 2011-12, published in the Journal of Social Inclusion Studies.
Those from the scheduled castes and tribes cannot avail of reservations – which try to correct historical discrimination against these groups – in state government jobs and state-run educational institutions when they migrate from one state to another, the Supreme Court ruled in 2018.
Caste Impacts Decision to Migrate, Benefits From Migration
Migration patterns and its impacts are based on a household’s caste, found a 2016 study from Beed in Maharashtra, published in the Social Science Spectrum. For Dalits, Vanjaris and Muslim migrants, sugarcane cutting was a long-term, permanent activity undertaken for generations. For dominant castes, such as the Marathas, it was undertaken for a couple of years in response to shocks or crises. In India, a ‘dominant caste’ refers to “a single caste in a specified region that usually has control or ownership of most of the agricultural land, is numerically significant, and as a result, holds a dominant position in that region”.
Whether migration leads to accumulation of wealth or not is also influenced by caste, networks, and land possessed, Kalyani Vartak, the author of the Beed study, concluded, based on her assessment of inter-generational migration in different caste communities. Families that were only seasonally involved in sugarcane cutting were better off than those involved in the job permanently, the study found.
There are overlaps between a migrant’s social and economic status.
Migration pays off if the worker is from a higher caste, found a 2018 study linking caste and job market participation among migrants in the slum areas of four Indian cities – Ludhiana, Ujjain, Mathura and Jaipur.
Social Segregation of the Labor Market
Communities that have been historically at the lower end of social groups are also the most disadvantaged in the labor market, found a 2018 study in southern Rajasthan by the Aajeevika Bureau, published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics.
Over 79 percent of the migration (mostly men) in the study was inter-state, with Gujarat as the most popular destination. At the destination, the work was dis-aggregated based on caste, leaving STs no choice but to work at the lowest end of the labor market. Among ST migrants, more than half worked as helpers and about 30 percent worked as masons, the study found. Other migrants from the ‘general’ category and OBCs performed more skilled tasks.
Caste is also a decisive factor among women in deciding the nature of employment and the nature of migration.
Women from SCs and STs often migrate from one rural area to the other because of displacement and loss in the ownership of forest resources, a 2012 study on gender and migration, conducted across 20 states of India by the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi between 2008 and 2011 showed.
About 66 percent of ‘upper caste’ female migrant workers were engaged in white-collar services, as compared to other caste groups – OBC (36 percent), SC (19 percent), and ST (18 percent) – the report said.
Caste Impacts Decision to Migrate, Benefits From Migration
Migration patterns and its impacts are based on a household’s caste, found a 2016 study from Beed in Maharashtra, published in the Social Science Spectrum. For Dalits, Vanjaris and Muslim migrants, sugarcane cutting was a long-term, permanent activity undertaken for generations. For dominant castes, such as the Marathas, it was undertaken for a couple of years in response to shocks or crises.
In India, a ‘dominant caste’ refers to “a single caste in a specified region that usually has control or ownership of most of the agricultural land, is numerically significant, and as a result, holds a dominant position in that region”.
Whether migration leads to accumulation of wealth or not is also influenced by caste, networks, and land possessed, Kalyani Vartak, the author of the Beed study, concluded, based on her assessment of intergenerational migration in different caste communities. Families that were only seasonally involved in sugarcane cutting were better off than those involved in the job permanently, the study found.
There are overlaps between a migrant’s social and economic status.
Migration pays off if the worker is from a higher caste, found a 2018 study linking caste and job market participation among migrants in the slum areas of four Indian cities – Ludhiana, Ujjain, Mathura and Jaipur.
Segregation of the Labour Market
Communities that have been historically at the lower end of social groups are also the most disadvantaged in the labour market, found a 2018 study in southern Rajasthan by the Aajeevika Bureau, published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics.
Over 79 percent of the migration (mostly men) in the study was inter-state, with Gujarat as the most popular destination. At the destination, the work was disaggregated based on caste, leaving STs no choice but to work at the lowest end of the labour market.
Migrants from the ‘general’ category have better qualifications for urban job centres, because of the historical advantage of education and are therefore able to find higher-paying jobs in urban areas.
Women from SCs and STs often migrate from one rural area to the other because of displacement and loss in the ownership of forest resources, a 2012 study on gender and migration, conducted across 20 states of India by the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi between 2008 and 2011 showed.
About 66 percent of ‘upper caste’ female migrant workers were engaged in white-collar services, as compared to other caste groups – OBC (36 percent), SC (19 percent), and ST (18 percent) – the report said.
(This article was originally published on IndiaSpend and has been republished here with due permission.)
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