Migration-dependent Economies

Detailed chapter description

Migration-dependent economies are economies in which household reproduction, local consumption, labour markets and investment are materially shaped by earnings generated outside the place of origin. This is more specific than saying that a region has many migrants. In large parts of Mithila, Vajji and Anga, migration has become a recurring institution linking villages and small towns to distant labour markets while families, land claims and social obligations remain anchored at home. The result is not simple depopulation. It is a multi-local economy in which labour circulates, money and information return, and household decisions are made across two or more places. The evidence must be handled historically. Bihar’s 2019–20 Economic Survey described the state as labour-surplus and noted long-standing migration to other Indian states and foreign countries. Earlier NSS and longitudinal village surveys recorded extensive out-migration and remittance receipt, but their numerical estimates belong to their own survey years and should not be presented as current 2026 rates. More recent administrative systems such as e-Shram and One Nation One Ration Card improve visibility and portability for mobile workers, but they are not direct substitutes for a migration census. On the Nepal side, the 2021 population census and the 2022/23 Living Standards Survey provide newer benchmarks for absence abroad and remittance dependence in Madhesh Province. This chapter therefore focuses on the economic architecture of mobility: why workers leave, how corridors are organized, who remains behind, how destination wages influence origin labour markets, how skills and enterprises circulate, and how risks are distributed. Chapter 121 will examine remittance use, consumption and housing in greater detail. Keeping the two questions separate prevents a common analytical error: treating every consequence of migration as a consequence of remittance spending alone.