Global migration trends and determinants

India's migration histories which is centuries old is diverse and complex . Approximately 20 million Indian migrant workers live world wide. In 1970s US was most preferred destination for skilled Indians who could not get satisfactory job in India. This was termed as brain drain. This raised concern of losing educated work force. Highly skilled Indians emigrated for better employment opportunities. Bright young Indians emigrated for education .Semi/ unskilled workers flew to South East Asia and Gulf countries where Indian Diaspora resides. Remittances from them have grown considerably as India being world's leading remittance receiving country. Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad serve as corridors for international mobility of Indian professionals. Many immigrants are now returning home to take advantage of new economic opportunities, reconnect their families or if pushed out due to racial problems, negative attitudes towards migrants and increasing unemployment problems. They function as bridges between their new home and country of origin by facilitating transfer of technology, capital and expertise. They bring skills, work experience, and global connections and prefer to settle in areas where better living conditions are available. This brain circulation can be beneficial to both developing and developed countries.

As many industrialised countries will be affected in the next decades by the consequences of demographic change, governments increasingly tap into the source of immigrants as a chance to meet their labour market needs. Also Germany has started to reform its immigration and integration regime over the past decade. However, little information exists on the impact of changing opportunity structures on the labour market integration of newcomers. Traditionally, the issue of how immigrants fare in their host countries has been studied either from an intergenerational perspective – comparing different generations of immigrants – or from an individual perspective – analysing trajectories and sequences of migrants’ labour market integration. Studies concentrating on the trend of labour market integration, instead, are largely missing. Based on micro-census data from 1996-2010, the paper, for the first time, analyses how recent institutional changes of Germany’s immigration and integration regime have affected the performance of newcomers. Besides established human and social capital theories it therefore integrates institutional variables by separating two groups of new immigrants – nationals from other EU member states and third country nationals – whose access to the labour market has been affected largely by recent policy reforms.

Countries and demographers differ regarding the definition, estimation, and projection of international migrant stocks and migration flows. Despite these difficulties, the United Nations Population Division prepares, every two years, estimates, referring to past quantities, and projections, referring to future quantities, of net migration (immigration minus emigration) for all countries and regions of the world. We compare two examples taken from the World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2011), with alternative projections of net migration based on gravity-type models for migration flows (Cohen et al., 2008 and Kim and Cohen, 2010). The two examples refer to (a) net migration from less developed regions to more developed regions and (b) net migration from the rest of the world, excluding the United States of America, to the United States of America. In both examples, the UN projections assume net migration declines to 0 by 2100. By contrast, in the gravity-model projections, net migration rises smoothly to a plateau about twice as high as present estimates of net migration; net migration ceases to increase as the populations of origin and destination countries stabilize.

MIGRATION AND CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF DEORIS IN ASSAM

Dr. Sujata Deori & Dr. Niranjan Das

Abstract:

The Northeastern Region of India indeed presents a glorious example of diversity which is very well reflected in the mosaic of socio-cultural traits which are followed by myriads of distinct aboriginal tribal communities inhabiting this region. The Deoris amongst them are no exception to this rule. It is only about a century ago that they moved to their present settlements, and some of them still occasionally visit Sadiya for religious purposes (Gait, 1905). The term ‘Deori’ is attached to the religious or priestly functionaries of various tribal as well as non-tribal communities of Assam. At present, Deoris are mostly found in the eight districts of upper and middle Assam and in some pockets of Lohit and Tirap district of Arunachal Pradesh. The paper entitled ‘Migration and Socio-Cultural Transformation of Deoris in Assam’ analyses the causes of migration and consequent socio-cultural changes of Deoris that were firmly practiced in the pre- independent period.
Key Words: Migration, Community, cultural assimilation, cultural transformation