Seminar by Prof. Vinoj Abraham and Prof. Praveena Kodoth

Conceptual and methodological challenges in the measurement of child migration
Insights from a large-scale survey in Kerala and Tamil Nadu

Prof Vinoj Abraham and Prof Praveena Kodoth

Chairperson:

Prof. Veeramani C

Director, CDS

Discussant:

Dr. K Ravi Raman

Member, Kerala State Planning Board

Abstract:

Migration undertaken in circumstances of poverty, debt and livelihood insecurity or conflict and violence disentitles children of basic public provisioning and intensifies deprivation in ways that could have far reaching implications for well being in later life. Micro studies demonstrate the links between the nature of labour migration and deprivations faced by children but macro estimates have been found wanting as they miss out on or under-estimate categories of migrants such as seasonal and short-term migrants who are most vulnerable to deprivation. Children who migrate as or along with seasonal and short term migrants bear the brunt of deprivation in terms of disruption of schooling and lack of access to public services related to nutritional support, health and food security. The size, composition and structure of migrant children themselves remain unclear. The spatial and temporal patterns of family and child migration differ from migration of single males, who comprise the bulk of internal labour migrants in India. These factors have made estimation of child migrants difficult. The State’s approach has been to view migrant children as primarily the responsibility of the private households and only delinquencies of various nature have attracted the attention of the State, in an attempt to rescue and reinstate the responsibility to the guardians. This approach has rendered invisible large numbers of children who migrate with their families in conditions of economic stress, livelihood insecurity or conflict. The imperative to count, classify and analyse child migration thus remains. It is in this context this study was undertaken at the behest of UNICEF India to estimate child migrants and probe their access to public provisions in the two states of India. Invisibility of children, clustering and nature of labour mobility make the task of measurement of child migrant a daunting one. In this paper we draw on a survey undertaken to estimate child migrants and to understand their access to public services to explore the methodological challenges in doing so. We compare our methodology with those used by previous studies to estimate interstate migrants in Kerala and also compare the findings of our study with that from a purposively selected region in Kerala (an additional component of our study) to check for robustness of our estimates.