Paper short abstract:

South to South migration is important for Kerala, and promoted by government programmes. The paper explores the impacts of migration beyond mere economic aspects; it finds that remittances indeed promote investments in rural areas but might lead to environmental degradation and food insecurity in the future.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the various impacts of South to South migration and remittances on farm households in Kerala, India. Supported by government training programmes, migration is of outstanding importance for Kerala, where the majority of migrants leave for Gulf countries and the remittances from those countries account for about 20% of the State’s domestic product (Zachariah and Irudaya Rajan, 2012).

Against this background, the following research question is addressed: How do remittances impact rural farm households? Malappuram district has been chosen as case study because of its high share of migrants and its high amount of remittances transferred from international migrants. Survey data was collected among 400 rural households during 2010 and 2011. Data is analysed by means of descriptive statistics and logistic binary regression.

Our analysis finds that remittances indeed relieve farm households credit constraints and facilitate investments, in line with the tenets of the Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) and previous empirical research. However, remittances might even increase the farmers’ socio-economic vulnerability in the long term by exposing them to risks of world market price variability as well as to environmental degradation due to mono cropping and its impact on water provision. Further, the change from food to non-food cultivation has severe implications for the regional capacity of food production and hence food security. In conclusion, this research points to the indispensable need of including effects of migration on food security and the ecology into the overall account.