'Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi'
Abstract
Migration is perceived as a way of life, a coping mechanism often providing a means of alternate livelihood to the human population ever since the dawn of civilisation. Migration is a worldwide phenomenon and perceived as the movement of people/ animals/ birds and insects from less endowed areas to greener pastures in search of better income, food, work or even more suitable socio-economic/geographic milieu. One of the popular forms of migration namely the economic migration has resulted from unequal development trajectories (McDowell and De Haan, 1997; Kothari, 2002). This supposedly led to one-way population movements from less endowed areas to well-endowed prosperous areas through the ‘push’ created by poverty and a lack of work and the ‘pull’ created by better wages in the destination (Lee, 1966). Theories of urban expansion were in agreement with this analysis of migration. Ideas of seasonal and circular labour migration were first articulated in the 1970s (Nelson, 1976; Rao, 1994) and defined as ‘characteristically short term, repetitive or cyclical in nature, and adjusted to the annual agricultural cycle’
