MIGRATION AND CHILD REARING

Migration Trends
The need for migration arises under complex conditions. In the rural areas it is deeply influenced by the availability of livelihoods that is related to agricultural productivity and market conditions. It is also a consequence of the lack of social services, especially education and healthcare. The urge for self development often drives people out of villages. These are all centrifugal forces affecting the family structure, agricultural productivity and rural development. Lack of scope for human development in the rural areas is a major drawback instigating villagers to move out of their homeland. Thus migration from rural to urban is both reactive and proactive.

Urban to urban migration, on the other hand, is mostly aspiration-based and is proactive. With growing knowledge and scope for employment and development, urbanites are not just moving from one city to another, they are also going abroad to foreign lands for higher education, self-development and also for better jobs. All such movements certainly have a profound influence on child-rearing or vice versa.

1.Rural to Urban Migration
When a child is sent for education to the city from a rural area, s/he faces a major cultural change adjusting to the urban way of life that is very different from what s/he is used to. The child has to adjust to factors of anonymity, different technologies and a totally new living environment of small houses (as urban land is scarce) in congested neibourhoods. Here the equation with neighbours is very different. Such circumstances inculcate isolation and a child coming from a joint family or living amongst kin becomes homesick and visits home frequently, especially when it is individual migration in search of a job or for education. However, often children from low-income groups prefer to go for shared living that gives them a sense of collectivity and security. Such migrants have very strong emotional ties with their families and visit home for every festival or in times of need. In cases where monetary remittances have to be made, the ties are even stronger.

However, as young migrants grow and develop and settle down permanently in cities/towns, they tend to marry and have their own nuclear families, until which time they remain a part of the original conjugal/joint family. The second generation of migrant families is born urbanites, with less direct links with the village. They consider their parents’ families as relatives and often find it uncomfortable to visit villages because of their getting used to an urban way of life. Such children see better scope for development in cities. Their aspirations also change because of the exposure to the variety available in the city.

As revealed from primary data assessment, the younger generation from villages even otherwise does not want to pursue agriculture. Cities, therefore, attract all the more, even though they often face difficulties. Hence, the will to adjust is intense; it becomes almost an issue of survival of the fittest! The poor come for survival and adjust to urban ways of life.


2.Urban to Urban Migration
In the case of urban to urban migration, aspirations become more prominent. The issue here is of scope for still higher achievements. If scope does not match aspirations, children are sent away from home to live in hostels to fulfill their desires (could be of the children or their parents). The pressure on self-development and professional development is so high that children get isolated from the family. Though in their early childhood they miss home, they get so naturalized into an urban way of life, with all its speed, that they drift gradually from family cultures and ties. Visiting home becomes rare, though technology helps them to keep in touch with parents, ties with relatives get diluted, more so after marriage.

The urban poor follow a rural pattern of interaction with the parent family. For the poor the family remains a source of emotional support. Since many of them come from rural areas, visits to villages are frequent. Living in low-income group housing, there is hardly any social mobility. Hence ties do not get diluted as much as it does with typical modern living.

Summary
Distance and aspirations are two major components diluting family ties. In the case of the rural poor, migration is more in search of livelihood for survival, though aspirations do play an influencing role. As mentioned, the younger generation does not want to cultivate their land anymore. Given the vicissitudes of rainfed agriculture, which is still prevalent in many parts of India, agricultural productivity is very uncertain and cannot be economically relied upon. This encourages migration further.

For the rural rich, the pattern follows that of an urban to urban migration. It is actually a change in the scale from that of rural migration. While the poor migrate for survival, the rich migrate to enhance their career. Economic conditions play a very dominant role, as any migration is influenced by better earnings or scope for better jobs.

When children move from one place to another, the impact of the culture of the place has less impression on them. Identifying themselves to a specific place does not occur. Neither are they able to assimilate the culture of a particular place, which they can call their home. As they drift from one place to another, they do not develop roots that were traditionally so common in the past. In olden times, in the south of India, place names were added to an individual’s name to establish identity and to relate. That is absent today. Moreover, the western culture of addressing an individual by his/her first name rules out further possibility of collectivism and acknowledges individualism and competitiveness. Hence migration brings about a move from dependency to independence.