SOCIOECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF TEMPORARY LABOUR MIGRATION IN INDIA

Temporary labour migration has rarely been studied at macro level despite its high prevalence in India. Drawing from the recently available Indian National Sample Survey (2007–08), this paper aims to study the basic differentials between temporary and permanent labour migration at the national level and examines the socioeconomic determinants of temporary labour migration at the state level. The study shows that temporary migration is seven times larger than permanent migration, and is largely a rural phenomenon dominated by rural to urban migration. A regional pattern in temporary labour migration is evident in the low-income Central and North Indian states. Low economic, educational and social status significantly induces temporary labour migration in contrast to permanent labour migration. As such, temporary labour migration appears to be a survival strategy of the rural poor in India.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE RECENT INTERREGIONAL MIGRATION FLOWS IN ITALY: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS*

ABSTRACT This study investigates the determinants of interregional migration flows in Italy in the light of the upsurge occurred in 1996, after two decades of decreasing internal migration rates. The fixed‐effect vector decomposition estimator (FEVD) is applied to a gravity model using bilateral migration flows for the period 1996–2005. It is shown that the FEVD improves the estimates with respect to the traditional panel data estimators. The GDP per capita and the unemployment rate appear to be the key determinants whose changes push migrants out from their regions and direct them to “better off” destinations. Migrants leaving the regions in the Center‐North respond differently to the push and pull forces compared to southern migrants. The dynamic model provides evidence for the presence of social networks, which in this analysis take place for each pair of regions.     

COAGULATING CATEGORIES: A REPLY TO RESPONSES

… ideologies of race define both white and black peoples, just as gender ideologies define both women and men. Thus, while ‘experience’ is an enabling focus in the classroom, unless it is explicitly understood as historical, contingent, and the result of interpretation, it can coagulate into frozen, binary, psychologistic positions (Mohanty, 1990: 195).     

20世纪90年代江苏省中心城市的增长模式和集聚扩散特征研究

本文计算评价了江苏省地区级中心城市的中心性,并利用重力模型划分主要中心城市腹地范围,通过分析人口密度函数的变化探讨了20世纪90年代江苏省中心城市的增长模式和集聚扩散特征。江苏省中心城市增长模式和集聚扩散特征存在南北差异。     

2. THE PUBLIC RELEVANCE OF HISTORICAL STUDIES: A REPLY TO DIRK MOSES

I am grateful to Dirk Moses for taking the time to study my work so assiduously and to comment on it so perspicuously. His essay is eminently well‐informed and even‐handed, and I have little to add to or correct of his characterization of my many, long on‐going, and admittedly flawed attempts to deconstruct modern historical discourse. He understands me well enough and I think that I understand his objections to my position(s). We do not disagree on matters of fact, I think, but we have different notions about the nature of historical discourse and the uses to which historical knowledge can properly be put.