Mapping the Mobility in India: Quality of Migration and its Gender Dimensions

In discourses on development, empowerment, and autonomy, mobility has generally considered as a facilitating force and positively coded as progress, freedom or modernity. A close look at mobility in India may tell altogether another story. Especially the mobility of women which brings to mind issues of restrictions, vigilance and control. In this context, this paper examines the quality of migration and sex differentials in quality of migration for India and its six regions. This paper seeks to answer three basic questions (1) Does all mobility brings development or can be considered as an indicator of development? (2) Does mobility is push factor or pull factor induced phenomenon in India? and, (3) what is the pattern of migration returns in India? Overall, this paper aims to understand how different the meaning of migration for men and women in India is? Sex wise bifurcation of mobility shows the greater mobility of women (64 %) in India. In which 95 % is explained by push factors and 5 % is explained by pull factors. For males, 90 % of migration is driven by pull factors. Mobility within states is dominated by women (77 per cent), while long distance migration such as inter-state (68 per cent) and international (82 per cent) are an instance of male prerogatives in India.