Migration, Development and Social Change in the Himalayas: An Ethnographic Village Study [Hardcover]

This book teases out the reasons for, and the socio-economic impacts of, different types of migration on contemporary rural households and individuals. The author creatively depicts the dynamic microcosm of one village in the North Indian Kumaun Himalayas, near the border with Chinese Tibet, giving voice to the life stories of a range of migrants. Through this ethnography, migration is revealed as a fundamental part of the multifaceted 21st-century changes which the village is experiencing.

From elderly women, to unemployed men, young farm women and local children, the book demonstrates how village life is continually constituted socially and economically by overlapping migration patterns  including outmigration, return migration, in-migration and even non-migration. Extending the argument, the author demonstrates that the village microcosm is linked to many other villages which are microcosms in their own right as well as in relation to the main village across a spatial hierarchy.

The theoretical implications of the study are teased out to inform our understanding of rural-urban migration trends and impacts more generally, and as such the book will be of interest to researchers of the South Asian region but also of internal migration in the global context.

Foreword  0. Introduction  1. Tejam village features introduced  2. The history of migration from Tejam  3. Reasons for out-migration from Tejam  4. Out-migration from Tejam: multidimensional impacts  5. Non-migration in Tejam  6. Return migration to Tejam  7. In-migration into Tejam: a repeat story  Conclusion  Appendices Author reflections on the village study process

This book teases out the reasons for, and the socioeconomic impacts of, different types of migration on contemporary rural households and individuals.