Notes on on the Duration of Residence and Migration

Sometimes a question on the duration of residence at the place of enumeration is included in the census questionnaire. An analysis of information obtained through this question forms another approach to the study of migration.

Persons who have lived in the place of enumeration all their lives are treated as non-migrants.

The following categories are included as migrants on the basis of their duration of residence at the place of enumeration, and these include “all who have ever migrated: (a) those born outside the area of enumeration and (b) those born in the area of enumeration who had at some time lived outside it (return migrants).”

Thus, while measuring migration with the help of the question on the duration of residence, we take into account the number of return migrants; in the place-of-birth approach we exclude the number of return migrants from the category of migrants.

Though the duration-of-residence approach fills a serious gap in the place-of-birth approach, it is customary in many countries to differentiate migrants from non-migrants on the basis of birth statistics.

The most important aspect of the data on duration of residence is the information on the timing of the last move of life­time migrants. In this approach, therefore, the time or year of the move is a differentiating variable in contrast to the distance or the political boundary used in the place-of-birth approach.

In many countries, it is customary to differentiate migrants from non-migrants on the basis of the place-of-birth statistics and then classify the migrants (defined on the basis of place-of-birth data) according to the duration of residence in the place of enumeration. Such type of analysis has been found to be very useful in the study of migration.

In the 1961 census tabulations for India, migrants were classified according to the duration of residence at the place of numeration into the following categories: (a) less than 1 year, (b) 1 to 5 years, (c) 6 to 10 years, (d) 11 to 15 years, (e) 16 and over and (f) period not stated.

In male migrants are classified according to their duration of residence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is evident from that, of the 17,290 migrants to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands from other States of India according to the 1961 census, an overwhelming majority (73.95) has migrated only recently, that is, from 1955 onwards.

The development of these Islands was undertaken only after Independence; and workers for these development programmes were taken from other States to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Of the migrants to these Islands from outside India, the majority (80.55) were from Pakistan, probably refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan. Again, a large percentage (61.73 per cent) of the migrants from outside India has migrated only recently, that is after 1955.

This example illustrates the relative values of the classification of data based on the place-of-birth and on the duration of residence at the place of enumeration in our understanding of the various flows of migration during specific periods.

The advantages and disadvantages of using information on duration of residence at the place of enumeration to measure migration need to be noted.

The most significant advantage of this approach, as pointed out earlier, is that it takes into account the number of return migrants, that is, those persons who were born in a given area, but who subsequently moved out of that area and later returned to it.

These returnees are categorised as migrants according to the duration-of-residence approach which, incidentally, gives us some indication of trends in past migration.

There are, however, some problems associated with the accuracy of the data on duration of residence. The person, usually the head of the household, who gives the information, may not know exactly the duration of residence of each person in the household.

As a result, we may have a large number of persons for whom information on this point is not available. It has also been observed that the percentages of those for whom information on duration of residence is not available are higher for females than for males.

The data on duration of residence are also affected by the digit preference tendency of the respondents. Thus the number of persons reporting duration of residence as 10 and 15 years is very high as compared to the number of those who report other durations like 3, 7, 11, 13, etc. Recall-lapse on the part of respondents may also result in an inaccuracy of the data.