Left-Behind or Left-Ahead? Gendered Political Implications of Migration in India

• In Event: Gender and Politics in the Global South 1

Abstract

India has over 100 million economic migrants and 18 million women spend prolonged periods in the absence of their migrant husbands. Studies on sending regions across the world ignore the gendered political consequences of migration. Past scholarship on India has focused on the impact of migrants in destination regions. I provide the first study of how female political behavior is affected by male absence due to migration. To deal with self-selection into migration I use a nationally representative panel of 24,000 respondents to compare women whose husbands turn migrants with those having co-resident husbands. I supplement this with a matching exercise and corroborate the findings using 20 interviews with elites and residents from Bihar – a high out-migration state in India. My findings suggest a nuanced impact of migration. On one hand it improves women’s empowerment within and outside the household. On the other, these effects do not last once migrants return home suggesting that the seasonality in migration also drives women’s political empowerment.

Author

• Rithika Kumar, University of Pennsylvania