Tight nexus or loose links? Rural emigration and borewell-irrigated agriculture in Karnataka (South India)

It is crucial to better understand the relationship between irrigated agriculture and migration. In India, irrigated agriculture, which keeps people busy and feeds their mouths, has undoubtedly contributed to the retention of the rural population. But for how long? Farmers’ low incomes and the envir...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:GeoJournal 2024-12, Vol.90 (1), p.2, Article 2
Main Authors: Landy, Frédéric, Venkatasubramanian, G., Ruiz, Laurent, Bergez, Jacques-Eric, Jacquet, Julie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural sciences
Agriculture
Agriculture, economy and politics
Debt
Drilling
Emigration
Environmental Management
Farmers
Fieldwork
Geography
Human Geography
Immigration
Irrigation
Irrigation pipes
Life Sciences
Linear analysis
Livelihoods
Migrants
Migration
Poverty
Rural areas
Rural populations
Social Sciences
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:It is crucial to better understand the relationship between irrigated agriculture and migration. In India, irrigated agriculture, which keeps people busy and feeds their mouths, has undoubtedly contributed to the retention of the rural population. But for how long? Farmers’ low incomes and the environmental crisis could lead to a huge rural exodus. Yet, more positively, rural emigration can be driven by the desire to finance irrigation, since migrants' incomes can then be invested in drilling wells or equipping pipes. This is migration for productive purposes, not migration for poverty or destitution. Through fieldwork research in Karnataka, this article highlights the complex links between irrigated agriculture and what is perhaps better described as ‘circulation’ rather than migration. Both appear as one means among others to produce household livelihoods. Through indebtedness they are embedded in a system that includes all sorts of other activities and resources. Our field study leads us to reject the overly linear models, which are very common in the literature because of their intuitive aspect, such as “irrigation reduces/increases immigration”.
ISSN:1572-9893
0343-2521
1572-9893
DOI:10.1007/s10708-024-11234-z