Abstract

India is one of the fastest-growing economies with a rising middle class. It also enjoys a demographic dividend owing to the expanding youth population. Simultaneously rising is the number of migrants from India, especially International Student Mobility (ISM). The outflow of Indian students to Anglophone countries such as the US, UK, Australia and Canada has doubled in the last two decades. Recruitment and consultant agencies are an integral part of the student migration infrastructure in India. However recent news reports have highlighted the lack of regulation and structure of the working of these agencies and their marketing influence over youth aspiring to pursue an education abroad having led to an increase in misinformation and deceits among student migrants. This study aims to unravel the recruitment experience of 20 Indian international students to further understand how recruiters influenced the decision-making of these students and the different kinds of challenges they have faced due to the involvement of recruiters in their migration journey.

Keywords: International Student Mobility, United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada

Authors

S Irudaya Rajan

Varsha Joshi

Rohit Irudayarajan

Abstract

As a growing proportion of world’s population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include cities and towns in the past few years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North and large cities, and shows a lack of adequate understanding of the urbanization-food security nexus in the small towns of the Global South. This paper aims to correct this bias. With a focus on India where urban growth is increasingly concentrated in small, former rural regions, this paper reviews the food and nutrition security implications of the country’s rural-urban transition. It identifies three conceptual pathways through which to understand the bearing of rural-urban transition on food and nutrition security that include: livelihood change, land use change, and dietary change. The evidence reviewed suggests the overall worsening of food and nutrition security for people in this rural-urban transition, particularly for the poor populations. The paper also identifies several key research questions and calls for more research on the urbanization-food security nexus in India.

Keywords: Food security, urbanization, India, rural-urban transition

Authors

Chetan Choithani,

Abdul Jaleel CP and

S Irudaya Rajan

As a growing proportion of world’s population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include cities and towns in the past few years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North and large cities, and shows a lack of adequate understanding of the urbanization-food security nexus in the small towns of the Global South. This paper aims to correct this bias. With a focus on India where urban growth is increasingly concentrated in small, former rural regions, this paper reviews the food and nutrition security implications of the country’s rural-urban transition. It identifies three conceptual pathways through which to understand the bearing of rural-urban transition on food and nutrition security that include: livelihood change, land use change, and dietary change. The evidence reviewed suggests the overall worsening of food and nutrition security for people in this rural-urban transition, particularly for the poor populations. The paper also identifies several key research questions and calls for more research on the urbanization-food security nexus in India.

Authors: George Joseph; Qiao Wang; Gnanaraj Chellaraj; Emcet O. Taş; Luis Andres; Syed Usman Javaid; Irudaya Rajan

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of return migration from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on the transfer of gender norms to the Indian state of Kerala. Migration to countries in the Middle East has led to significant remittance flows and economic prosperity, although the effects on social norms and attitudes remain largely unexplored. The paper finds that returning migrants from Saudi Arabia tend to exhibit
conservative values regarding gender-based violence and extreme attitudes pertaining to the perpetration of physical violence against women. Compared with those who have no migration experience, the attitudes of returning migrants from Saudi Arabia toward gender-based violence
were more conservative by three standard deviations, while the attitudes of those returning from the Gulf were less conservative by 0.5 standard deviation. Similarly, compared with those with no migration experience, returning migrants from Saudi Arabia were more conservative by 2.6 standard deviations regarding extreme attitudes related to gender norms, such as sexual assault, while those returning from the Gulf were less conservative by 0.7 standard deviation. These results show that migration experience can have a substantial impact on the gender attitudes of returning migrants, with potential implications for migration and gender policies in Kerala and for countries that send a large share of temporary migrants overseas for work.