Does climatic risk induce labour migration? Evidence from Semi‐Arid Tropics region of India

• Published date: 01 February 2022
• Author: Kalandi Charan Pradhan,Krishnan Narayanan
• Date: 01 February 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2323

ACADEMIC PAPER

Does climatic risk induce labour migration? Evidence

from Semi-Arid Tropics region of India

Kalandi Charan Pradhan

1

| Krishnan Narayanan

2

1

Economics, School of Humanities and Social

Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology

Indore, Simrol, India

2

Economics, Department of Humanities and

Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology

Bombay, Mumbai, India

Correspondence

Kalandi Charan Pradhan, Economics, School of

Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian

Institute of Technology Indore, Khandwa

Road, Simrol, Madhya Pradesh, 453552, India.

Email: kcpradhan@iiti.ac.in

The paper aims to focus on climatic risk as a potential determinant of temporary

labour migration in Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT) village in India for the year 2013–2014.

Specifically, we address the question of how households use temporary labour migra-

tion as a coping mechanism to minimise the risk posed by climate variables such as

drought, floods, cyclone etc. In doing so, the paper uses a binary choice model (logis-

tic regression) to examine the potential socioeconomic and demographic factors

along with climatic risk that determine the probability of migration of workers in

select Indian semi-arid villages. The paper uses data from International Crops

Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). The results show that among

all climatic risk anomalies, maximum households in SAT villages are affected by

drought risk. It is accounted that 69% of households are influenced by the drought

risk. With respect to compensation of climatic risk, around 17% of non-migrant

households received government support, while only 9% of migrant households

received such assistance in this study. Also, the logistic regression models predict

that the probability of household having any temporary migrants is significantly

determined by climatic risk along with other demographic and socio-economic fac-

tors. To the best of the authors' knowledge, perhaps this is the first paper that makes

a direct approach of linking climatic risk with temporary labour migration in semi-arid

tropics region of India.

1|INTRODUCTION

Interlinkage between climate change and labour migration is one of

the unprecedented challenging issues in the context of livelihood for

developing countries (Kniveton, Schmidt-Verkerk, Smith, &

Black, 2008; Lilleor & Broeck, 2011; Marhiori, Maystadt, &

Schumacher, 2011; Stern, 2007). For last few decades, climate change

has been adversely influencing the human society in numerous ways,

and has brought a manifold changes in socioeconomic and demo-

graphic characteristics of the human society (Black et al., 2011;

IOM, 2009; Reuveny, 2007). As a developing country, India has also

been witnessing various types of climate related risks, and the country

is considered among the most vulnerable (Brenkert & Malone, 2005).

Loss of livelihoods in rural agriculture sector resulted from climatic

risks; people migrate to search employment opportunities in urban

industrial centre. In fact, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) assessment report shows that climatic risk drives the migration

but it is difficult to quantify the volume of migration (IPCC, 2014;

Kniveton et al., 2008). Because, the labour migration related to climate

change depend upon the interaction among the demographic, socio-

economic and geographical characteristics (Rajan & Bhagat, 2018).

In this light, some studies are conducted in developing countries'

context to show the linkages between climate change and labour

migration (Dillon, Mueller, & Salau, 2011; Lilleor & Broeck, 2011;

Maharjan et al., 2020; Marchiori, Maystadt, & Schumacher, 2012;

Pradhan & Narayanan, 2019; Rajan & Bhagat, 2018, among others).

Hence, it can be argued that migration acts as an adaptation to climate

change (Gemenne & Blocher, 2017; McLeman & Hunter, 2010;

McLeman & Smith, 2006).

Even as internal migration has emerged as a vital economic pro-

cess that is rapidly growing in India, migration research has been des-

ignated low priority by demographic researchers in the country, and

Received: 27 March 2020 Revised: 27 April 2020 Accepted: 17 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2323

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https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2323