Events

Can PLFS, 2020-21 Help us Understand Internal Migration Patterns in India?

Date and Time

December 2, 2022

3:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Location

Online via Zoom

Panelists
Mohd. Imran Khan

Assistant Professor, Sarla Anil Modi School of Economics, NMIMS

Shamindra Nath Roy

Associate Fellow, CPR

Speakers
S Chandrasekhar

Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

CPR and the Initiative on Migration Action and Knowledge Engagement (I-MAKE) invite you to a special talk on:

Can PLFS, 2020-21 Help us Understand Internal Migration Patterns in India?

Speaker:
S Chandrasekhar, Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research

Discussants:
Mohd. Imran Khan, Assistant Professor, Sarla Anil Modi School of Economics, NMIMS
Shamindra Nath Roy, Associate Fellow, CPR

About the Talk

PLFS or the Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2021-22 conducted by India’s National Statistical Office (NSO) also collected information on migration at the household level. The question is can we compare estimates from PLFS 2020-21 with that from the 2007-08 survey on employment and unemployment and migration to better understand migration in India? Does the PLFS sampling design capture data on migration? Is the criteria for selection of households in a labour force survey vs migration survey the same? What useful insights can be drawn by comparing the characteristics of migrants and non-migrants within these surveys? This presentation analyses internal migration and labour market transitions in India. It concludes that both surveys are useful for understanding pre and post migration labour market transitions along the twin parameters of principal work status and industry of work and occupation. However, any comparison of estimates of migration rates across the two surveys could lead to misleading conclusions.

About the Speaker

An alumnus of Delhi School of Economics and Pennsylvania State University, S Chandrasekhar is Professor, at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. He was awarded the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal 2016, by The Indian Econometric Society, for outstanding contributions to the field of quantitative economics. He has worked extensively on the issue of urbanization, labour markets & internal migration, and income inequality in India.

Mohd. Imran Khan is an Assistant Professor at Sarla Anil Modi School of Economics, NMIMS. His areas of specialisation include labour economics and labour migration. He has been awarded travel grants by UNU-WIDER to attend WIDER Development conference at the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), Accra, Ghana in 2017 and by Gulf Research Centre Cambridge (GRCC) to attend the Seventh Gulf Research Meeting (GRM) at the University of Cambridge in 2016. He was also awarded CDS fellowship in 2015 and the ICSSR Doctoral fellowship in 2014. His research interests include labour economics, development economics, micro-economics, Indian economy, migration studies.

Shamindra Nath Roy is an Associate Fellow at CPR. He is a mixed-method researcher with an interest in examining inequalities through a spatial lens. He has worked on rural-urban transformations, urban governance, internal migration dynamics in India, determinants of female workforce participation in India’s cities and socio-spatial inequalities in basic services at the sub-city level. He has an M.Phil and Ph.D in Regional Development with a specialization in geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.