Reintegration of Return Migrants in Kerala: Policy Initiatives and Challenges

Abstract

This paper is concerned with incident of return migration from overseas countries and their reintegration processes, and uses Kerala as a study area where  the state with largest concentration of return migrants in the country. Kerala has been a major source of human resource for the overseas countries for the world for a long which started in the 1830s and lead thousands of Keralites to gulf destinations still continues. The paper attempts to find out the policy initiatives and its challenges for the reintegration of the return migrants in Kerala state. In the special context of return migration of workers from overseas countries due to the economic recession, new labor policies and other reasons the reintegration of the return migrants is one of the discussing issue today in Kerala as others affected countries. The state Kerala has been affected much more in the return migration and the need of the attention to this area is very important today.  There are various detailed studies which deals with magnitude and causes of return migration to Kerala in the special context of economic recession in gulf countries. But only a few of studies have in the area of policy issues in return migration. Though some studies tried to analyze the functional status of different departments working for the migrants those did not gave special attention to the issues of return migrants.  The study will bring an insight in the selected topic for the review of literature.This paper attempts to put together issues related to international migration in a global perspective and covers wide range of issues related to the reintegration of returnees to the home society , current policies, programs and argues a multilevel planning not only just for individual migrants but also the family and total community at all. The paper argues that the migration policy should have to be expanded and current policies are not sufficient according to the strength of return migrants in the State. The paper discuss there should be a need of systematic policy initiatives and planning from the governments and other departments at  the local level with support of every stakeholder, i.e., the local communities in the home society, local self governments and the migrants themselves.