The Informal Labour Market in India: Transitory or Permanent Employment for Migrants?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper studies the characteristics of the workers in the informal economy and whether internal migrants treat this sector as a temporary location before moving on to the organised or formal sector to improve their lifetime income and living conditions. We limit our study to the Indian urban (non-agricultural) sector and study the characteristics of the household heads that belong to the informal sector (self-employed and informal wage workers) and the formal sector. We find that household heads that are less educated, come from poorer households, and/or are in lower social groups (castes and religions) are more likely to be in the informal sector. In addition, our results show strong evidence that the longer a rural migrant household head has been working in the urban areas, ceteris paribus, the more likely that individual has moved out of the informal wage sector. These results support the hypothesis that, for internal migrants, the informal wage labour market is a stepping stone to a secured life in the formal sector. JEL codes: 017; J15; J61; J42.

Determinants of temporary migration of rural small, marginal and landless households in West Bengal, India

“…15-24 years, 25-34 years, 35-60 years, and above 60 years (reference category) have been considered. Rural male out-migration is affected by the caste system prevalent in India (Panda 1986;Haberfeld et al 1999;Singh 1997;Mosse et al 2005;Junankar and Shonchoy 2013). Hence the population has been categorised into three classes, i.e.…”

“…In contrast, the younger males aged 15-24 years are relatively less likely to migrate as they are five times more likely to migrate than the males aged more than 60 years. Caste status appears to be another important correlate of rural male out-migration (Singh 1997;Mosse et al 2005;Junankar and Shonchoy 2013). The privileged caste group which is least likely to migrate is the reference category.…”

“…Dhesi and Gumbar (1982) found in one of their studies that more of unmarried and young people do migrate while in another they found it is the married people who migrated more compared to the unmarried (Dhesi and Gumbar 1982;Chand et al 1998). Junankar and Shonchoy (2013) noted that caste and religion play an important role in inducing migration. Most authors find that migrants generally have lower level of education (Thakur et al 1997;Gupta and Prajapati 1998).…”

Characteristics of Enterprises More Likely to Face Constraints in the Unorganised Manufacturing Sector in India

“…Shonchoy and Junankar (2013) observed that those household heads that were belonging from lower social groups (castes and religions) were more likely to be found in the informal sector of India. The importance of caste in entrepreneurship has been closely examined by Iyer et al (2013), where it is found that Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are underrepresented in ownership of enterprises in India.…”

The Integration of Interstate Migrants in India: A 7 State Policy Evaluation

“…For example, the informal economy in India employs over 80 per cent of non‐agricultural workers (Rothboeck and Kring, 2014). Broadly the informal labour market comprises of workers in the informal sector plus casual workers employed in the formal sector (Shonchoy and Junankar, 2014). In India, the dichotomy between formal and informal is not distinctive and policy makers tend to factor in both.…”