WHY DO MIGRANTS DO BETTER THAN NON-MIGRANTS AT DESTINATION? MIGRATION, CLASS AND INEQUALITY DYNAMICS IN INDIA

The puzzle that we address in this paper is why migrants at their destination fare better than non-migrants, across different socio-economic classes in India, while the general perception of migrants is that they are less endowed than the locally residing population. We explain this by the relatively high elite presence among migrants, dualism of Indian migration (between long-term and circular ones), but mainly by the differences in the levels of education. In India, migration has taken an overall color of increasing the nation-wide inequalities (mainly by heightening the rural–urban gap and urban disparities).