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Abstract
This study disentangles the concept of relative deprivation by distinguishing feelings of individual and collective relative deprivation as sources of individual aspirations. Both concepts are then operationalised and empirically tested with regard to their relative importance in migration decision-making. Based on data from the National Sample Survey in 2008, two factors turn out to be relevant in understanding the Indian migration pattern. First, individual and collective relative deprivations are both strong predictors for out-migration, but only for short-distance, intra-state movements. The likelihood of out-migration towards international destinations is significantly higher for households with lower levels of individual and collective relative deprivation. Second, leaving aside the effects of relative deprivation, absolute deprivation plays a rather ambivalent role: while economically better-off households have a higher propensity for sending (primarily male) migrants to distant inter-state and international destinations, shorter distance out-migration is mainly dominated by female migrants stemming from poorer households.
Notes
1. This paper is part of the The Determinants of International Migration (DEMIG) project and has received funding from the European Research Council, under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme, and additional funding from an Erasmus Mundus scholarship.
2. Other major achievements of migration theory, such as the role of social capital, networks or herd behaviour, have not been the focus of this study and are, therefore, not part of the empirical analysis (Epstein Citation2008; Fawcett Citation1989).
3. For instance, Gurr (Citation1970) emphasises the importance of relative deprivation as a root source for collective violence; the larger the discrepancy between the individuals’ situations and those of others, the greater the likelihood of unrest.
4. In India, for instance, Tripathi and Srivastava (Citation1981) find that Muslims as a socially disadvantaged minority show a much more biased attitude towards Hindus if they are individually and collectively more deprived.
5. Crosby (Citation1976) identifies four categories of behavioural responses to feelings of relative deprivation: (i) positive individual behaviours (self-improvement efforts such as education and moonlighting); (ii) negative individual behaviours (fatalism, resignation, and mental and physical stress symptoms, e.g. alcoholism, mental illness and ulcers); (iii) positive collective behaviours (working for change within the limits of a system, e.g. by voting against incumbent politicians, and social and political activism); and (iv) negative collective behaviours (participating in protests, riots and revolutions).
6. The author is grateful to one of the anonymous referees for pointing to this very relevant aspect.
7. The households were allocated to each Indian federal state and Union Territory in proportion to the population registered in the 2001 census (National Sample Survey Office Citation2010).
8. A household is defined as a ‘group of persons who normally lived together and took food from a common kitchen’ (National Sample Survey Office Citation2010, p. 6).
9. Migration rates for men (women) are defined as the number of male (female) out-migrants per 100 persons.
10. For the out-migration households, the annual household consumption expenditure is predicted with a Tobit model on the annual amount of remittances and some other explanatory variables. This procedure corrects for the problem of endogeneity of the household consumption expenditure variable in the migration decision models.
11. See a for the spatial pattern of state-related relative deprivation.
12. Information on out-migration of former household members is reported by household heads. This means that out-migration of entire households is not included in this dataset.
13. Obviously, multidimensionality of reference groups for social comparisons and perceptions of relative deprivation is even more complex than operationalised here. For instance, other relevant parameters for social comparisons are educational achievements or social status. Unfortunately, the National Sample Survey does not provide information about these dimensions. Information about educational background is only collected for present household members, but not for out-migrants, i.e. former household members.
14. This prediction estimates remittances-corrected household consumption levels for those households reporting out-migrants regardless of whether or not the households have received remittances. Households without former out-migrants are excluded from this procedure and actual consumption levels are used for estimating the migration equations.
15. ‘Other religious groups’ and ‘other backward classes’ are used as references for the categories on religious background and social class, respectively.
16. About 70 per cent of migrant households in rural areas had their previous place of residence in a rural area, while 28.6 per cent had migrated from urban areas. About 56.8 per cent of migrant households in urban areas had migrated from rural areas, while 42.8 per cent were urban-to-urban migrants (National Sample Survey Office Citation2010).