Demand factors in migration

The bulk of international migration from India, whether historically or even today, has been “structured” from the demand side, i.e., the number, the destination, and the exact characteristics of the migrants have been determined by the requirements of the host economies. Central to that structure are a group of formal or informal “agents” who are not independent operators but are dependent on employers from abroad. These agents in turn access groups of workers with appropriate characteristics through a well-established network, often even involving social and kinship connections, resulting in the mass migration of workers from specific locations.

The 19th century migration of Indian workers, from specific locations in Bihar, East U.P., Andhra, and Tamilnadu, to work on plantations in the West Indies, Mauritius, Fiji, and South Africa, was organized through the mechanism of the “indentured” system, where the selected workers were “tied” to a labor contract for a specified period of time through the payment of advances. Much the same kind of a mechanism was used in the post-oil-price-hike period to organize the large migration of workers, this time mainly from Kerala, to West Asia. These workers were drawn predominantly from three districts (Trichur, Malappuram, and Cannanore) with large Muslim populations.

Incidentally, this pattern of migration being structured from the demand side, which entailed a combination of: (1) the number of migrants being “rationed” from the demand side, (2) the migrants being physically selected, and (3) a system of advances to tie them to a labor contract, was seen even in the case of long-distance internal migration to inhospitable terrains like the Assam tea plantations in the 19th century; it was even in vogue for the recruitment of the noncasual (i.e., non-“badli”) segment of the workforce in the Calcutta jute mills.