Migration
Also called: Movement of people · Topic: Human Capital: Education, Health and Demographic Dividend · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 4 "Globalisation and the Indian Economy"; Class 11, Ch 4 "Human Capital Formation in India"; Class 11, Ch 6 "Employment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues"
Meaning
Migration means moving to a place that offers better-paid jobs, from rural to urban areas within India or abroad. It has costs: transport, a higher cost of living in the new place, and psychic costs, the non-money cost of living in a strange socio-cultural setting. Class 11 treats migration as a source of human capital formation, because the higher earnings are greater than the costs of migrating. In India, rural-urban migration is driven by unemployment in villages. International migration is often by technically qualified people, such as engineers and doctors, looking for higher salaries.
Example
Census 2011 counted about 45 crore internal migrants, about 37% of the population, by place of last residence. India is also the world's largest remittance recipient (remittances are money migrants send home), at about US$129 bn in 2024.
Don't confuse with
- Brain drain: brain drain is one kind of migration: the emigration of highly educated professionals, which depletes the home country's human capital.