8 Reintegration and future plans of return migrants (original) (raw)

Kerala has a long history of migration, and return migration always has a part of the migration process. Kerala has been the major sender of migrants to the Gulf region since the 1970s after the 'oil boom' in the Gulf region (Prakash, 1978; Zachariah and Rajan, 2004). Currently, 90 percent of Kerala's international migrants live in the Gulf region (Rajan and Zacha-riah, 2019). Before opening the door to the Gulf region, most Keralites had migrated towards the Indian metropolitan cities such as Bombay, Kolkata, Delhi and Madras, and there were some migrants from Kerala to Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaya and Singapore. The migration to the Gulf countries has resulted to an inflow of remittance to Kerala which eventually led to poverty reduction, a decrease in the unemployment rate, increases in health care facilities, and improvements in education and demographic indicators (Zachariah et al., 2001a, 2001b). Consequently, however, the flow of international migrants returning back to Kerala started during the mid-1980s, and increased during the 1990s from the Gulf region to Kerala due to the completion of construction and infrastructural works in the Gulf countries, as well as the intense demand of the local citizens for a more significant share of the employment market. Hence, many unskilled and semiskilled labourers were forced to depart from abroad (Shekhar, 1997; Zachariah et al., 2001a; 2001b). As per the Kerala Migration Survey conducted in 1998 (Zachariah et al., 2001a; 2001b), the stock of return migrants was more than seven lakhs in Kerala. In 2003, the number of return migrants rose to 8.9 lakhs (Zachariah and Rajan, 2004). In the global financial crisis period, the number of return migrants increased to 1.16 million, which slipped to 1.15 million in the post-global economic crisis period. During this period, the majority of returnees were from the UAE, followed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (Zachariah and Rajan, 2010, 2011). However, after 2011, returnees increased to 1.3 million, and the largest number of return emigrants were from Saudi Arabia, followed by UAE and Oman (Zachariah and Rajan, 2012a; Prakash, 2013).