Seasonal Migration and Welfare/Illfare in Eastern India: A Social Analysis

Ben Rogaly, Daniel Coppard, Abdur Safique, Kumar Rana, Amrita Sengupta and Jhuma Biswas

Journal of Development Studies, 2002, vol. 38, issue 5, 89-114

Abstract: Over 500,000 people are regularly engaged in seasonal migration for rice work into southern West Bengal. This paper analyses social processes at work in the interactions between employers and workers, and the welfare/illfare outcomes. Group identities based on religion and ethnicity are strengthened through the experience of migration and deployed by some migrants to make this form of employment less degrading. In West Bengal seasonal migration can involve practical welfare gains. Importantly, an informal wage floor has been put into place and managed by the peasant union allied to the largest party in the Left Front regime. However, the costs and risks of migration remain high.

Keywords: seasonal migration; West Bengal; group identities; welfare gains (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220380412331322521 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:38:y:2002:i:5:p:89-114

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220380412331322521

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().