Return of Overseas Contract Workers and their Rehabilitation and Development in Kerala (India)
| Author | P.R. Gopinathan Nair |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2435.00071 |
| Date | 01 March 1999 |
| Published date | 01 March 1999 |
Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd.,
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© 1999 IOM
International Migration Vol. 37 (1) 1999
ISSN 0020-7985
Return of Overseas Contract Workers
and their Rehabilitation and Development
in Kerala (India)
A Critical Account of Policies, Performance
and Prospects
P.R. Gopinathan Nair*
ABSTRACT
Large-scale emigration of temporary contract workers from Kerala to coun-
tries in the Middle East began in the early 1970s. Return migration flows into
Kerala assumed large proportions only after the mid-1980s. Returned mi-
grants include repatriated illegal immigrants and immigrants evacuated
during times of political upheaval and hostalities.
Since the end of the 1980s there have been several instances of such
repatriation. While reliable information on migration-related matters is not
available in Kerala, not even on the magnitudes of onward and return flows,
the total number of returned migrants in Kerala must be already around
0.5 million.
Returned migrants are, in general, middle-aged persons with low levels of
education, skills and experience. After return, about one-half remain
unemployed and of the other half, a few retire from active work and the rest
enter into self-employment, mostly in the services sector, or get into salaried
jobs, or become wage labour in agriculture or fishing.
Returned migrants have received little assistance from the state government
or any other institution for rehabilitation and development. The socio-
political and economic climate in the state has remained unfriendly to
investment, due to a variety of constraints such as scarcity of land,
segmentation of the labour market, wage rates much higher than labour
productivity, militant trade unionism, political ideology inimical to the
* Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India.
210 Nair
growth of the private capitalist sector and inadequacy of the energy and
transport infrastructure.
Loss-making public capitalist sector enterprises have discouraged returned
migrants from entrusting their savings with government and several fake
private sector enterprises which lured them into taking shares have cheated
them. The inertia on the part of the state government to attend to the problems
of the emigrants began to thaw after 1996, when it introduced an accident-
cum-life insurance policy for non-resident Keralites. But no specifed
scheme for harnessing the development potential of return migrants has as
yet emerged.
The novel experiment begun in Kerala for local level development with the
active participation of the people, the availability of cooperative credit
agencies at all the local levels and the immense possibilities of development
of the state, offer a new opportunity for channelling the development
potential of the returned migrants into productive investment.
INTRODUCTION
India has a long history of overseas migration. The Indian diaspora lies
scattered in all continents and most countries of the globe. The phenomenon of
overseas migration of contract workers is, however, of more recent origin. The
massive flows of overseas workers began only in the early 1970s when
countries in the Persian Gulf region began to invest massive amounts of capital
in infrastructure development and construction activities from incomes
accruing from petroleum sales following the oil price hike of 1973. These
countries experienced shortages in domestic labour supply to man such
activities and opened their doors to expatriate labour, mostly from countries of
South and South East Asia. In the migration flows which ensued, India held a
pioneering position because of the advantages she held as a result of socio-
political and trade contacts with the Middle East for several centuries. Kerala
held the premier position among the migrant sending states in India because her
relations with the Gulf countries were more intense than those of other states,
and also because the socio-economic environment in Kerala favoured such
exodus of employment seekers.
Although Kerala accounts for only 1.8 per cent of the land area of India and
3.4 per cent of its population, it nonetheless has accounted for 40-60 per cent of
Indian emigrant contract workers to the Gulf region during the past quarter of
a century (Gulati and Mody, 1985; Nair, 1986; Nair, 1996; Nair, 1997).
Overseas contract workers return to the countries of their origin after varying
periods abroad. Problems of reabsorbing return migrants did not cause concern
to the migrant sending countries so long as the size of the return flows remained
small. In the context of Kerala, return migration caught the attention of the
211Return of overseas contract workers and their development in Kerala
public and the government only in the second half of the 1980s, and lately the state
government has awakened to the need to look into questions of repatriation,
rehabilitation and welfare of the returnees. The question of mobilizing the
development potential of returnees also seems to have gained a place on the
agenda of government.
RETURN MIGRATION
Magnitude
Return is the final stage in the migration process for overseas contract workers.
The magnitude of return migration depends on several factors, including the
volume of onward migration, the type of visa/work permit of the migrant,
working and living conditions abroad and socio-political conditions in host
countries. Until about the end of the 1970s, immigration to Gulf countries was
relatively easy, and once in the host country, finding a job was not difficult. On
the loss of job with one employer, the worker could seek employment with
another or go to another country in the region. Wage and salary levels were high
and competition from workers from other emigrant sending countries in Asia
was not fierce. In such circumstances, workers from Kerala and other parts of
India returned home after having fulfilled their migration goals in terms of
savings and discharging their financial obligations at home.
During the 1970s and the early years of the 1980s, annual return flows were
relatively small. But as favourable conditions began to decline after the end of
the 1970s (due to such factors as arabization, depletion of petro-dollar stocks,
decline in oil prices, increasing competition among expatriates from different
countries for work opportunities in the Gulf region, cuts in the wage and salary
levels and the tightening of rules relating to immigration and employment of
expatriate workers) return flows increased. However, such developments did
not, in fact, reduce the volume of the emigration owing to relaxation, in
practice, of emigration rules, and growth in the volume of clandestine emig-
ration. Most countries in the Middle East became havens for thousands of
illegal immigrants from several countries in Asia, the share of Kerala among
such illegal immigrants being especially high. The UAE and the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia have sent back thousands of illegal immigrants to countries of
origin by granting them amnesty. Hostilities in Kuwait also led to an increased
flow of return migration in 1990.
Thus, since the 1980s not only has there been a steady increase in the annual
inflow of return migrants after termination of jobs or expiry of visa, there has
also been sudden spurts in the flow arising from ad hoc reasons such as sudden
war and abrupt decisions by host countries to compulsorily repatriate illegal
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