Livelihood Challenges Of Migrant Women Home-Based Garment Workers Of Tiruppur In Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Migration is a human mobility towards attaining socio-economic advancement as a result of poverty, unemployment, social conflict, communal tension and educational opportunities. Basically migration is meant for moving in search of livelihood and it takes place internally as within the domicile state and externally as outside the state which is known as inter-state migration. Migration refers to the movement of people from one place to another for seeking better economic condition and for improving their standards of livings. While seeing the interstate and intra-state migration in India ‘feminization of migration’ is now significantly increasing trend due to greater impact of structural changes in rural economy, after implementing New Economic Policies at the back drop of Globalization which impacted on Urbanization, shifting of workforce from agriculture to both organized and unorganized industry and tertiary activities, unemployment and searching of livelihood opportunities etc. In the recent past there are certain evidences surfacing on the public and academic domain that Women are outnumbered when compared to men in migration has been proved evidentially by NSSO, Census of India data and other academic institutions. Moreover, earlier female migration is connected with marriage now at present various international and national level research studies have identified that it is associated with family movements and primarily searching of employment opportunities for their livelihood. In the case of Tamil Nadu, it is noticed that out of every 100 migrants, 58 were female and 42 were male in the state. As a national average (census, 2001) data indicates among rural migrants out of every 100 total migrants 64 are female and 36 are male while in urban area the share of males being 48 out of 100 migrants. From different parts of Tamil Nadu people are migrating from rural to urban area particularly to Tiruppur which is situated in the Manchester region of Tamil nadu-the textile city of the state for searching employment/daily wage for livelihood options due to agricultural distress, unconditional unemployment and poverty in the native villages.