Poverty and impermanent migration: A study on the status of interstate migrant workers in Trivandrum District Deepika V.S. Research Scholar, Department Of Economic Studies and Planning, Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi, Karnataka, India, Email: deepikavs91@gmail.com, Alternate email: vsdeepika91@gmail.com Online published on 2 April, 2019. Abstract Migration is a multi-dimensional phenomenon. In the national level, internal labour flow has a diverse picture. For some it is for better opportunities and for others, it is a struggle for survival. Internally, migration is more among unskilled-unorganized workers than skilled organized workers and most of them are impermanent migrants. The unorganized workers struggle to come out of extreme poverty through migration and try to reap the maximum benefit from it. Thus, this paper minly aims at examine the socio-economic status of interstate migrant (ISM) workers in Kerala and also enquire how far this migration helps them improving the living standards of the migrant workers (MWs) and their family. This study is mainly based on the primary data collected from 110 in-migrant workers. The findings divulge that MWs are exposed to changes in their economic conditions after the migration to Kerala. Poor economic and social backgrounds are the primarily identified factors behind migration. The empirical findings reveal that migration has brought in relatively better economic life in terms of income levels, remittances and savings. However, if we take long term macro level perspectives into consideration, labour migration beyond certain level should not be encouraged, because it is associated with prevalence of unemployment and poverty apart from illiteracy, population explosion, lack of investments, infrastructure etc. Top Keywords In-migration, Inter-state migration, Kerala-Gulf connection, Migrant workers, Socio-economic status. Top |