Human Migration and the Refugee Problem

What the official syllabus says

UPPCS Main Examination, General Studies I.

Human migration-refugee problem of the World with focus on India.

Topics in detail

The line takes migration as a world problem and asks for a focus on India. Study the concepts first, then the major refugee situations of the world, then India's own experience as a source and a host.

Concepts

• Types of migration: internal and international, voluntary and forced, permanent, seasonal and circular
• Push and pull factors; Ravenstein's laws of migration; Lee's theory
• Refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless persons, economic migrants
• Climate and environmental migration

The international framework

• The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol
• The principle of non-refoulement
• UNHCR (1950) and the International Organization for Migration
• Global Compact on Refugees and Global Compact for Migration (2018)

Refugee problems of the world

• Conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ukraine
• Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Bangladesh
• Crossings of the Mediterranean into Europe
• Effects on host countries: pressure on resources, social tension, security concerns, burden sharing

India and refugees

• Partition (1947): the largest movement of people in India's history and the rehabilitation that followed
• Tibetan refugees (from 1959), refugees from East Pakistan (1971), Sri Lankan Tamil refugees (from 1983), Chakmas and Hajongs, Afghan and Rohingya refugees
• India is not a party to the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Protocol and has no separate refugee law; foreigners are governed by general law on foreigners and immigration
• The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 and the debate around it

Internal migration in India

• Rural to urban migration; marriage as a leading cause of female migration
• Seasonal and inter-state labour migration from states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
• Remittances and their effect on source villages
• Migrant workers' problems: housing, portability of welfare, social security; the return migration of 2020; One Nation One Ration Card

Indians abroad

• Indentured migration of the colonial period; migration to the Gulf, the West and South-East Asia
• The Indian diaspora and remittances; the Emigration Act, 1983

Overlaps

The diaspora and India's relations with neighbours are in General Studies II; Frontiers and Boundaries on this paper covers the borders across which refugees move.