Why Leave India for America? A Case Study Approach to Understanding Migrant Behaviour*
| Published date | 01 June 1987 |
| Author | A.W. Helweg |
| Date | 01 June 1987 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1987.tb00578.x |
Why Leave India
for
America
?
A
Case Study Approach to
Understanding Migrant Behaviour
*
A.W. HELWEG"
INTRODUCTION
Why do some people in India stay in their land of origin while others .Lave for places like
the United States? The question is important because many of those who migrate are
highly skilled, professionally oriented and managerially trained persons who had good
career prospects in India. Yet others who developed good careers in the States have left
them at their peak to start over again in India. Such behaviour has a distinctive quality
because the new type of migrant, which is the focus of this study, differs from the reset-
tlement of refugees and the people who provided fodder for America's industrial machine
in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Today the travel and communications
facilities are much more efficient and the composition of the population flow consists of
educated, professional and technical people of Asian origins rather than peasant people of
European stock.
The general question of migrant motivation, however, has occupied the minds of many
researchers and volumes are being written on the subject. The founding father of modem
migration studies probably was E.G. Ravenstein (1885, 1889) who, in the middle nine-
teenth Century, postulated that
:
1)
migration between places declines with increasing
distance,
2)
most long distance moves are to major urban centers,
3)
rural-to-urban
migration may occur in ascending stages from farm to village to town to city, and
4)
for
every migration stream there is a counter-stream.
Everett Lee (1 966) refined Ravenstein's postulates to emphasize that migration vanes
according
to
:
1)
amenities in
a
region,
2)
diversity ofpopulation in occupational skills, race
and ethnicity, and
3)
fluctuations in economy, technology and level of development. He
also emphasized that population movements follow 'well defined streams'. Ira
Lowry
*
An
earliest version of this paper was presented at the XIe World Congress
of
Sociology, New
Delhi, August
1986.
Professor Alan Jacops read earlier versions
of
this paper and provided
valuable comments. However, all inadequacies are the responsibility
of
the author.
**
Western Michigan University, (U.S.A.)
165
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