Международный журнал экономики и менеджмента

A Study on Labour Migration and Wage Earnings in India with Special Reference to Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Murugan Thangavelu

Migration of workers is a human phenomenon which has historical roots and wider economic implications. Large-scale population mobility, accompanying structural change, is one of the fundamental features of modern economic development. Yet, attention has only recently been focused on the causes and consequences of such change. While labour migration affects the development process in a number of crucial ways, it impacts first and foremost on the labour market in sending and receiving areas. Moreover, the extant labour market structure also affects the migration process. The migration of labor from rural to urban areas is an important part of the urbanization process in developing countries. In some regions of India, three out of four households include a migrant. The effects of migration on individuals, households and regions add up to a significant impact on the national economy and society. Generally, India’s poor have meager physical assets and human capital and belong largely to so cially deprived groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). Women share an extraordinary burden of deprivation within households. The National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) has released Report No. 533 titled “Migration in India, 2007-2008” shows that the rural urban migration is looked as ensuring livelihood security. This is due to the fact that in urban areas, it is fairly easy to get some employment in the informal sector. Besides this has social, economic, environmental and political implications, which may alter the community in the long run. Despite the increasing wage earnings from informal sector are not all that socially accepted. Due to various interconnected factors, workers in urban informal sector are looked down. In this scenario, it is important to study the patterns of migration and wage earnings in urban informal sector. Three major cities Chennai, Madurai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu will be selected for an in-depth exploration. Snowball sampling procedure will be employed. The secondary data will also be used for the study.