Migration for hard work: a reluctant livelihood strategy for poor households in West Bengal, India

What can in-depth and long term ethnographic research contribute to our understanding of why some households use migration as part of their livelihood strategy while others do not? How can ethnography enrich our understanding of the changing conditions for migration and people’s responses to these over time?

This report draws upon detailed ethnographic fieldwork conducted in one of the poorest districts in West Bengal, India. It encompasses periods of fieldwork between 1999- 2000 and from 2005- 2006. It therefore forms a study of change over time amongst a local population of mostly landless rural poor and a smaller proportion of micro landholders. The report documents households’ ambiguity towards migration where the wage labour conditions for migrants may be exploitative but where nonetheless migration remains a central livelihood strategy. Due to research findings in the first period of fieldwork, the second period takes a strong focus on the role of household structure in migration.

Detailed analyses contrasts three migrant life histories to illustrate longer processes of change and draw together some possible hypotheses for why certain households continue to have at least one member who migrates temporarily at some point during the year, while others have either stopped or never migrated at all. The paper also places an emphasis on the role of household members who stay behind in supporting and managing the risks inherent when one family member migrates.

The key findings of this paper are:

• for the households with no land, migration is often to meet basic needs, for those with land migration may allow saving and investment
• migrants are principally men migrating for wage work. However in more recent years the growth of telecommunications has opened up new migration opportunities. In addition, migration for trade or begging has become increasingly important and women now migrate as well
• informal support by female family members who stay behind and have to draw on social networks in order to subsist in the absence of or gaps in wages is a vital component. This is a key factor in decisions made over whether to migrate or not.