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Migration is inevitable in human life. Migration has driven the civilization to innovation in technology, editing of livelihood and osmosis of culture. Sometimes, people migrate out of compulsion and stress; on the other hand, they are attracted to place of better opportunity and scope. The factors for the first kind are called Push and for the latter, it is pull. We have witnessed the horrible phase of forced migration during Covid pandemic, the agony and fear of survival. The number of internally displaced person due to violence and conflict reached 41.3 million, and the number of stateless persons globally stands at 3.9 million in 2018. During Covid Pandemic, in India there had been 139 million migrants of which 90 per cent has got the agrarian backgrounds. When farmers quit farming in favour of f inding livelihoods in mega cities, agriculture suffers and food security as well. Again, so long agriculture keeps failing to generate happy returns, the flow out from rural to urban remains an unstoppable process. The book endeavoured into eliciting the choices and expectations, fear and uncertainties as integral to migration. The statistical tools have uniquely been applied to isolate the fact, factors and fads around migration. I hope, the book will be of worth reading for faculties, scholars and policy makers for global audience across the terrains and trajectories of disciplines .

Migration is inevitable in the process of economic development (Afsar, 2003; Ballard, 2005). There exists a two-way causation between migration and economic development. Migration induces economic development while economic development induces further migration. Migration can be two types: international migration and internal migration. International migration deals with migration across the countries of the world, while internal migration deals with migration within the national boundary of a country (Zohry, 2005). There are four streams of internal migration which are rural-rural, rural-urban, urban-rural, and urban-urban. Among these four streams, rural-urban migration has certain distinct characteristics which affect developmental aspect of both places involved namely, place of origin and place of origin and place of destination. It is well known that developmental disparities between rural and urban triggers rural-urban migration. People generally migrate from less developed rural countryside to more developed urban centers they left farming and engaged in modern works which are more profitable and low risk oriented (Bhattacharya, 1993; de Haan, 1997). The impact of migration can be assessed in several ways; therefore welfare impacts, social impacts, economic impacts etc. For example, remittance send by the urban migrants to their native villages help them to evade poverty; increase consumption; invest more in agriculture, education, health. Remittances have certain social impacts as well.

The economics of migration has drawn attention of many economists and social scientists over the years. Decision making in migration has certain inherent complexities as it takes into account the characteristics of both areas of origin and areas of destinations. Similarly it involves the status of agricultural productivity and efficiency, extant of urban informal sector along with various other amenities available in the destination urban areas. The subject of rural-urban migration and its inter-linkage with urban informal market and agricultural productivity have received considerable attention in theoretical framework as well as in empirical research. Among these vast literatures, the study has reviewed some of them and made a synoptic assessment on these issues in general. Moreover an attempt has been made to review the existing literature on rural-urban migration in West Bengal. 2.1 Migration Decision Making Migration decision can be two types: individual decision making and family decision making. These two sets of migration decision involve distinctly different sets of factors. Stark (1991) has rightly pointed out that “….the family, should not be treated as if it were an individual”. So there are differences between individual migration decision and family migration decision. Migration decision depends on a host of factors, some are economic, some are demographic and some are sociological in nature. However, individual and family migration decisions are determined by two distinctly different sets of factors.

3.1 Introduction In developing and in semi-developed countries, rural-urban migration is driven by the uneven distribution of employment, income-opportunities etc. (Skeldon, 1990). Rapid population growth, especially in rural areas, provides an important demographic backdrop to these rural-urban population shifts. Given the growing and well-known difficulties that are faced by the overall Indian population in f inding productive employment, it is important to study the characteristics of labors that migrate from rural-urban areas. Under this backdrop, attempts have been made in this study to examine the nature, pattern and determinants of rural urban migration and the spread of urban informal sector and the likely impact of rural-urban migration on agricultural productivity and efficiency.

Local of the study: Migration, from very beginning of civilization, has been one of the most important phenomenons in population distribution across the world. As a result, it has been a major focus of both sociological as well as demographical studies around the world. Though migration theories get its root from the famous article of Ravenstein (1889) but most of the modern migration studies so far have centered around the conventional approach of migration as one of the cornerstones known as the Harris-Todaro Model of Migration Harris and Todaro (1970), which is considered as one of the cornerstones of migration studies. This model dealt with the migration decision of an individual of a family, keeping apart the role of family as a whole. The main approach of this model was some kind of cost-benefit type of assessment in undertaking migration decision. Here the potential migrant was to analyze the expected return that he/she may receive after migrating and the cost that to be borne in the process. If the net return is found to be positive then there is every chance that the concerned person will migrate and more from the place of origin to the place of destinations. The major attack that this approach received is that it gave individual the highest importance in migration decision ignoring the role of ‘family’ and thus the migration studies until recently were partial in nature.

Descriptive Statistics of Independent Variable With Respect to Minimum, Maximum, Range, Mean, Standard Deviation of Values, Variance, and Coefficient of Variance: Results: The variable age (x1 ) having the range between 20 to 62. So, the mean of the age (x1 ) variable is 38.64. Similarly, the other variables education (x2 ), family size (x3 ), family income (x4 ), risk factor (x5 ), management factor (x6 ), natural calamities (x7 ), employment status (x8 ), expenditure (x9 ), push factor (x10 ), pull factors (x11 ) have the mean 5.220, 4.720, 1.270, 0.505, 4.790, 3.875, 4.809, 5.655, 2.226, 5.613 respectively. Here, we see that distribution of variables education (x2 ) and push factor (x10 ) among the respondents are moderately consistent and residual distribution of variables among the respondents are highly consistent.

6.1 Summary The study analyzed the economics of family migration decision and its relationship with urban informal sector and agricultural efficiency. The study is mainly based on primary survey, though various secondary data Sources have been consulted. The primary survey has been conducted in Birbhum district of West Bengal covering 300 households with equal share of rural and urban households. The selection of the district is mainly guided by the dominance of rural-urban migration and the wide prevalence of both agricultural and non-agricultural activities. By tracing the reasons of migration across the states of India, the study provides a vivid picture of the rural-urban migration in West Bengal and it is associated linkages with agricultural efficiency and urban informal sector. Sophisticated statistical and econometric tools have been utilized to justify the economic explanation of rural urban migration in West Bengal.

Depending on various findings of the study, the present section put forwards some of the policies that can be implemented for using population mobility as a tool of economic development in both rural and urban areas. • Steps must be taken to boost up the urban services sector as it is the most attractive sector for urban in-migrants. Pro-migrant policies including some economic and social benefits e.g. free health insurance, employees’ provident fund, grater loan facilities at lower rate etc. must be provided to the migrants so that it helps the labors as well as self-employed persons of urban informal sector.

Acharya, Arun Kumar and Jose Juan Cervantes (2009): “Female Migration and Urban Informal Sector in Monterrey Metropolitian Region”. Journal of Social Science, 21 (1), pp.13-24. Afsar, Rita (2000): “Rural-Urban Migration in Bangladesh: Causes, Consequences and Challenges”. University Press Limited, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Afsar, Rita (2003): “Internal migration and the Development Nexus; The Case of Bangladesh”. This paper is one of twelve prepared and presented at the “Regional Conference on Migration, Development and Pro-poor Policy Choices in Asia”. The conference was jointly organized by the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit, Bangladesh, and the Department for International Development, UK, and took place on 22-24 June, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Agesa, Richard U. and Sunwoong Kim (2001): “Rural to Urban Migration as a Household Decision: Evidence from Kenya”. Review of Development Economics, 5 (1), 60-75. Ahmed, Nuzhat (1992): “Choice of Location And Mobility Behaviour of Migrant Households in a Third World City”. Urban Studies; 29 (7), pp.: 1147-1157.