Paper short abstract:

This paper uses life histories of highly vulnerable households in high-migration areas of Southern Rajasthan, to shed light on their poverty dynamics. It finds that gender inequality is reinforced at several key life moments, particularly in relation to land and asset ownership.

Paper long abstract:

This paper utilises life history interviews of highly vulnerable, high-migration households in Southern Rajasthan to identify their poverty dynamics. The study covers 25 Scheduled Tribe (ST) households, in Udaipur District, Rajasthan. Inequalities are overlapping and multidimensional: across gender, caste, race and ethnicity, region, nationality, age and (dis)ability. While the study points towards the feminisation of agriculture, it also highlights the structural nature of gender inequality: land remains in the legal ownership of men, while men regularly return to their home village to tend to their lands. Gender inequality is reproduced and reinforced in conflicts and disputes over land. Women can experience a descent into poverty upon marriage, and a deepening of poverty and social exclusion, upon the death of their husband.

Migration for work can be poverty-reducing, but ill-health can also make these benefits temporary. A cycle of migration, work and ill-health plays itself out, whereby the male member is eventually unable to work due to illness. For out-migration communities, shocks can further cement vertical inequalities and deepen relationships with informal, non-state institutions: for example as ST families take loans from Rajput moneylenders. Relationships with formal state institutions can prove to be a valuable lifeline, with highly vulnerable households benefitting from subsidised rations through the Public Distribution System, and paid work through MNREGA, particularly for single women.

The insights will be useful to the general community of researchers and practitioners who are interested in the poverty dynamics of the 'most vulnerable' and how they relate to work and migration.