India Migration Report 2010

Governance and Labour Migration

S Irudaya Rajan, S Irudaya Rajan

• Editore: Routledge India
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000365733
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: Sociology

The first India Migration Report proposed by the Research Unit on International Migration set up by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Government of India at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala is organised into articles on four broad themes: migration, remittances, gender, and policy issues.

The opening article reviews the historical trends in international migration, followed by two articles that deal with workers' remittances and one which discusses the maturity that Kerala emigration reached in this state. Other articles focus on cross-border migration in developing countries, and as yet less documented gender issues, including the migration of nurses and housemaids.

Though large numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers migrate to the Gulf region, the prevailing labour laws and the violation of human rights in the GCC countries are an unexplored area; this is something this volume also addresses. The cost of migration and the role played by unscrupulous recruitments agents are serious concerns for both the government and international agencies working in migration. The Emigration Act 1983 provides guidelines for organising recruitment business in India. Do we have to revamp the recruitment system? These are some of the themes this book discusses.

1
Historical Overview of International Migration

S. Irudaya Rajan and Prabhat Kumar

Introduction

‘Migration is a product not of discrete and unconnected factors in the sending and the receiving countries, but of historical connections between the countries. It is not fortuitous; it is systematic’ (Bonacich and Cheng 1984).¹ Migration from India has taken place from the very dawn of civilization. The result of such a tendency among mankind is there for everyone to see. There is hardly any part of the earth where Indians are not found today. Earlier, migration used to be limited to merchants and sailors. But over the past two centuries, it has acquired a very different magnitude and pattern. Present-day migration is largely a continuation of the pattern which began about two centuries ago. The presence of the British and the demand for cheap labour in other parts of the empire lay at the root of the phenomenon of migration in those days, a phenomenon which has continued till date. When we think of the beginning of the new era of migration from India, we think back to the abolition of slavery in 1834, an incident which marked the beginning of the export of indentured labour from India as a replacement for the slaves thus liberated, who had been working in capitalist farms. This article is divided into two broad periods: the pre-independence period and the post-independence period.

1 Skeldon (1997) Migration and Development: A Global Perspective.

Pre-independence Migration

As far as the beginning of mass migration from India is concerned, it began following the abolition of slavery in 1834 after the concerned act having been passed by the British parliament in the previous year. Migration thereafter was more or less steady over a long period. Though the volume of migrants remained high, the proportion of the population migrating was low compared with those of other countries of the world. Of the 30 million migrants who had left the country before independence, an estimated 24 million returned to the country. There are various causes attributed to their massive return; unfamiliar cultural environment and hostility from the natives are cited as some of the important causes (Vertovec 1995; Thiara 1995). Pre-independence migration may be divided into indentured labour migration (1834–1910), emigration under the kangani system (1910–1935), and free migration (1936–47). The following section furnishes some information on these types from India.

Indentured Labour from India

Indenture was a halfway between slavery and free labour, but also different from peonage and serfdom. It was peculiarly adapted, like slavery, to the recruitment of labour through migration. It enabled business enterprises to transfer labour to newly developing areas, and yet restrained that labour from immediately acquiring holdings on its own in places where unexploited land was available in abundance. Indenture was a less satisfactory arrangement than slavery because it was less permanent; nevertheless, it was able to attract persons who were too proud to become slaves. It did imply a social gulf between employers and labourers, but it held the possibility of eventual freedom for the latter.

Indentured labour migration to Mauritius, Natal, and Fiji was part of a global process of labour migration from India, which began after the abolition of slavery. During this period, the demand for cheap, unskilled, and pliant labour force in colonies primarily engaged in sugar production was at its pinnacle and the demand was significantly filled by indentured labour from several of the colonial settlements. During the 80 years of its existence, the system of indenture (which formally existed from 1830 to 1916) was responsible for the transportation of more than a million Indians to provide cheap labour required for the global development of British capitalism (Tinker 1974). Indeed, the sale of southern Indian slaves by the Dutch in the latter part of the eighteenth century to French planters in Mauritius and Reunion had been a precursor of indenture; in 1800 there were an estimated 6,000 Indian slaves in Mauritian estates while thousands were enslaved in Reunion. Later, Mauritius, having partly solved its labour shortage through the importation of Indians in the early nineteenth century, set a precedent, which led to the formalization of the indenture system. Thereafter, indentured labour was crucial both in facilitating the expansion of local colonial economies, by cutting labour costs and facilitating capital accumulation, until the early twentieth century.

A historical assessment of the conditions prevailing in India during the British rule reveals the existence of a crucial connection between British expansionism and the international commoditization of Indian labour (Thiara 1995). The transportation of a massive labour force from India under the indenture system was a direct result of complete British penetration into the social and economic fabric of the Indian society. The introduction of landlordism, excessive revenue demands, commercialization of agriculture, change in rent in kind to rent in cash, decline in indigenous handicrafts, discriminatory taxation on Indian goods, and persistent famines and pestilence were among the many reasons for migration, which offered the only avenue of hope to many. While all sectors of the Indian society were affected by these profound changes, it was the lower agricultural classes, which predominated among the recruits, which were the worst affected.

During the period 1834–1910, over half a million indentured migrants entered Mauritius; in Natal, 152,189 arrived between 1860 and 1911; while a total of 60,965 Indians landed in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 (Gillion 1962). Calcutta remained the main ‘coolie catchment’ centre and port of embarkation until 1870 after which the recruiters cast their net towards the United Provinces and Bihar. Increased demand for labour resulted also in the resumption of migration from Madras and Bombay in the 1840s (Tinker 1974). Often, colonies expressed a preference for recruits from particular geographical areas of India, as illustrated by the Caribbean, where a prejudice existed against workers from south India (ibid.). After 1880, the flow of indentured labour migration was deflected away from Mauritius, which by 1871 had an Indian population of 216,258 compared wit...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Historical Overview of International Migration
• 2. Remittances, Consumption, Investment, and Economic Growth
• 3. Impact of Rupee Appreciation on Remittances
• 4. Stability in Kerala Emigration: Results from the Kerala Migration Survey 2007
• 5. Cross-Border Migration in Developing Countries
• 6. Migration and Gender Empowerment: Emerging Issues
• 7. Gender Mobility and State Response: Indian Domestic Workers in the UAE
• 8. Understanding Female Emigration: Experience of Housemaids
• 9. Student Nurses and their Migration Plans: A Kerala Case Study
• 10. Impact of Male Migration on Women’s Mobility
• 11. Migration Policy Reforms in India: Some Reflections
• 12. Looking Beyond the Emigration Act 1983: Revisiting the Recruitment Practices in India
• 13. Managing Migration from India: Lessons from the Philippines
• Notes on Contributors
• Index