International Migration, Return Migration and Occupational Mobility: Evidence from Kerala, India
- PDF / 684,279 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 21 Downloads / 195 Views
International Migration, Return Migration and Occupational Mobility: Evidence from Kerala, India Anu Abraham1 Accepted: 5 September 2020 © Indian Society of Labour Economics 2020
Abstract This paper examines the impact of international migration on the occupational mobility of workers over the three phases of labour migration—pre-emigration, emigration and post-return—by constructing mobility matrices using the sample of return emigrants from the Kerala Migration Survey 2011. The study finds that a large proportion of emigrants from Kerala take up occupations in the service sector while abroad irrespective of their pre-emigration occupation or training. Most emigrants return, while they are still in the labour force, and the major reason for returning is adverse labour market conditions at the destination. Though around half of the return emigrants report the inclination to take up entrepreneurial activities, only about 10% are engaged in self-employment, suggesting that there is no real evidence of a rapid boost to entrepreneurship. The study finds that there is moderate mobility between the pre-emigration occupation and the occupation abroad as well as between the occupation abroad and post-return, but not between occupations in the pre-emigration–post-return phases, indicating that workers move out of their traditional occupations while abroad, but most likely return to their original occupation post-return. Work experience abroad does not cause any significant upward mobility in any occupational groups except among professionals, who move to managerial positions post-return. Keywords International labour migration · Return migration · Occupational mobility · Transition matrix · Kerala · India JEL Classification F22 · J24 · J62
* Anu Abraham [email protected] 1
School of Economics, NMIMS University, Mumbai, India
13
Vol.:(0123456789) ISLE
The Indian Journal of Labour Economics
1 Introduction There are an estimated 272 million international migrants in the world today, representing an increase of almost 100 million since 2000, and 2.5 times that of 1980 (UNDESA 2019). Migration is considered a response to better returns to human capital and can lead to an improvement in the occupational status of the worker. Return migration1 is viewed as an integral part of temporary labour migration when people migrate to take up contract employment in the receiving country (Zhao 2002) or when they migrate with an intention to return to the home country. On the one hand, there is evidence to suggest that work experience and skills gained abroad can improve the occupational choices available for the individual post-return in the home country. Assuming return migration entails the accumulation of physical capital and skill augmentation, and if the proportion of those who return is large enough, aggregate output and even output per capita may increase in the source economy (Dustmann et al. 2011; Arif 1998). The literature posits that this dual flow of physical and human capital potentially gives the push to ec
Data Loading...
