- Ernest George Ravenstein (born Ernst Georg Ravenstein, 1834–1913), a German-born geographer and cartographer who worked in London, formulated the “Laws of Migration” in papers of 1885 and 1889.
- He used the birthplace tables of the 1871 and 1881 British censuses. He compared where people were born with where they were counted and identified counties of absorption (net gainers) and counties of dispersion (net losers).
- His central claim was that migration is not random: it follows regular patterns governed by distance, economic opportunity, transport and the social character of migrants.
- The laws were drawn from internal migration in an industrialising country, though their reach extends to international moves. Migration in India, with its huge volume of short-distance, marriage-driven and circular movement, is a demanding test of them.
The Laws and the Indian Evidence
| Law | Ravenstein’s statement | Verdict for India |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Most migrants move only a short distance | Strongly holds |
| 2 | Migration proceeds step by step | Holds, weakening |
| 3 | Long-distance migrants go to great centres of commerce and industry | Holds |
| 4 | Each stream produces a counter-stream | Holds; circular moves exceed it |
| 5 | Town natives are less migratory than rural people | Holds, weakening |
| 6 | Women dominate short-distance moves, men long-distance ones | Holds, but for marriage, not work |
| 7 | Most migrants are adults; families rarely move far | Partly holds |
| 8 | Large towns grow more by migration than by natural increase | Holds only for some metros |
| 9 | Migration grows as industry, commerce and transport develop | Holds, but slowing since 2011 |
| 10 | The main direction is from farming areas to industrial centres | Holds, with rural–rural exceptions |
| 11 | The main causes are economic | Holds for men; not for women |
1. Most Migrants Move Only a Short Distance (Distance Decay)
- Numbers fall with distance: longer moves cost more, carry more risk and rest on poorer information.
- Indian evidence (Census 2011, migrants by last residence):
- 60.9% moved within the same district.
- 25.9% moved to another district of the same state.
- Only 11.9% crossed a state boundary, and 1.2% came from abroad.
- Even international moves are short: 95.5% of immigrants in 2001 came from neighbouring countries (Bangladesh 59.8%, Pakistan 19.3%, Nepal 11.6%). Assam receives more Bangladeshis and Uttar Pradesh more Nepalese, each from the nearer source.
- Delhi draws about half its in-migrants from next-door Uttar Pradesh, then Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, though its catchment has lately widened to far-off states.
- So about 87% of India’s 45.58 crore migrants never left their state.
- A 2024 study for the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, using railway and mobile-roaming data, confirmed that short-distance moves form the largest share and that flows follow gravity-model patterns.
- Why short moves dominate in India:
- familiar language and culture;
- low cost;
- kin networks;
- marriage within the district or region;
- ease of returning for the farm season;
- administrative and institutional ease.
- Examples:
- Eastern Uttar Pradesh villages to Varanasi and Gorakhpur.
- Rural Bihar to Patna and Muzaffarpur.
- Tribal moves within Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
- Critique: short moves dominate numerically, but long-distance moves (Bihar to Delhi, Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai, Keralam (Kerala) to the Gulf) matter more for economic change, remittances and regional development.
2. Migration Proceeds Step by Step (Step Migration)
- Migrants move gradually up the settlement hierarchy: village → small town → district town → city → metropolis. Each step brings savings, skills and information. The path follows the central place hierarchy of Walter Christaller.
- Ravenstein linked this to absorption: towns near a growing city fill the gaps left by those who move into it, and are refilled from the countryside.
- Indian examples:
- Bundelkhand villages → Jhansi → Kanpur → Delhi.
- Jharkhand villages → Ranchi → Bengaluru or Hyderabad for service jobs.
- Odisha → Bhubaneswar → Surat or Mumbai for textile and construction work.
- Bihar → small towns → Delhi NCR → the Gulf, as a later step.
- The urban → urban stream (19.7% of internal migrants with known origin in 2011, and the fastest-growing in 2001–11) is largely step migration from small towns to Class I cities.
- Modification:
- Labour contractors, kin networks, cheap trains and mobile phones increasingly allow direct long jumps from a village to a metro or abroad, skipping the intermediate steps.
- This is the pattern of chain migration that network theory explains.
3. Long-distance Migrants Go to Great Centres of Commerce and Industry
- Indian evidence:
- Of inter-state migrants with known origin in 2011, 71% went to urban areas: 38.2% rural → urban and 32.7% urban → urban. Among all internal migrants, only 39% went to towns.
- Maharashtra (91 lakh) and Delhi (63 lakh) received the most inter-state migrants. Delhi and Mumbai held about 99 lakh migrants from other states.
- Corridors:
- Bihar and Uttar Pradesh → Delhi NCR.
- Odisha and Jharkhand → Surat (diamonds, textiles).
- Uttar Pradesh and Bihar → Mumbai (construction, services).
- Rajasthan → Ahmedabad.
- Across India → Bengaluru (IT and services).
- Indian migration reflects the “economic magnetism” of growth poles. Today’s magnets include services, construction and logistics as much as manufacturing.
4. Every Stream Produces a Counter-stream
- Each main stream generates a reverse flow, usually smaller: return migrants, failed migrants, retirees, and people carrying information back.
- Indian evidence:
- Urban → rural migration was 6.8% of internal migrants with known origin in 2011.
- Seasonal returns after the harvest or kiln season: Bihar and Odisha workers returning from Punjab.
- The 2020 lockdown sent over one crore migrant workers home in weeks, from Delhi, Mumbai and Surat to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, the largest counter-flow in independent India.
- Keralam had about 18 lakh return emigrants in 2023, up from 12 lakh in 2018 (Kerala Migration Survey 2023).
- Modification:
- In India the counter-stream is often part of circular migration: the same worker moves out and back every year.
- Ravenstein’s model of a one-way stream with a small return flow does not capture this to-and-fro rhythm.
- Some streams are highly one-sided. Bihar’s exchange with other states in 2001–11 had a migration effectiveness of −81: about nine left for each who came in.
5. Natives of Towns Are Less Migratory than Those of Rural Areas
- Indian evidence:
- Rural-origin migrants dominate: rural → rural and rural → urban streams made up about 73% of internal migrants with known origin in 2011.
- Push factors in villages drive this: fragmented holdings, low farm incomes, disguised unemployment, poor schools and hospitals, caste oppression.
- Rural → urban migration forms a major share of economic migration.
- Tribal labour moves seasonally from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to brick kilns in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
- In 2001, about 85% of intra-state and 63% of inter-state migrants were born in rural areas.
- Modification:
- Town natives have long moved less because jobs and services are close at hand, but urban Indians are increasingly mobile. Urban → urban moves more than doubled in 2001–11.
- Urban professionals and students form most of the skilled emigration to the West.
6. Women Are More Migratory over Short Distances; Men over Long Distances
- Strongly validated in India, but for a different reason:
- In Victorian England, women moved for domestic service and factory work.
- In India, women move for marriage, because of patrilocal residence: across villages within districts in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar, for example. Their moves are mostly intra-state and largely non-economic.
- Indian evidence:
- Women are about two-thirds of all internal migrants. Marriage was the reason for 66.5% of female migrants in 2011 and 86.8% in the PLFS 2020–21.
- Female migration is shortest: marriage accounts for 69% of female intra-district migrants and 54% of female inter-state migrants.
- Men dominate long-distance and economic moves. Work was the reason for 14% of male intra-district migrants, 33% of inter-district and 47% of inter-state migrants.
- International labour migration to the Gulf is overwhelmingly male.
- Recent change: independent female labour migration is rising:
- garment workers in Tiruppur and Bengaluru;
- domestic workers from West Bengal and Jharkhand in the metros;
- nurses from Keralam across India and abroad.
7. Most Migrants Are Adults; Families Rarely Migrate Far
- Indian evidence:
- Migration peaks in the 15–34 age group, the ages of marriage and first jobs.
- Long-distance labour migrants are mostly young men moving alone, leaving families behind.
- Modification:
- Family migration is significant in India. “Moved with household” was the reason for about 20% of male and 12% of female migrants (2011), and for over a quarter of female inter-state migrants.
- Brick-kiln and construction workers often move as whole families, children included.
8. Large Towns Grow More by Migration than by Natural Increase
- In 19th-century British cities, high death rates meant that growth came largely from in-migration.
- Indian evidence:
- For India’s urban population as a whole, natural increase and the reclassification of villages as census towns together added more in 2001–11 than net rural → urban migration.
- An older United Nations estimate (1984) put migration at about one-third of India’s urban growth.
- The law is weaker for India as a whole. It holds for fast-growing metros and industrial cities such as Delhi, Surat, Bengaluru and Pune, where in-migration is the main engine.
9. Migration Increases with the Development of Industry, Commerce and Transport
- Indian evidence:
- Railways shaped the historic corridors from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh to Kolkata, Assam and Punjab.
- Using railway data, the Economic Survey 2016–17 estimated work-related inter-state movement at close to 9 million people a year in 2011–16.
- Mobile phones, digital payments and online job platforms now spread information and cut the cost of moving.
- Migrants by last residence rose from 23.2 crore (1991) to 31.4 crore (2001) and 45.6 crore (2011), faster than population.
- Modification:
- The 2024 EAC-PM study estimated that the migration rate fell to about 28.9% by 2023, despite better transport.
- It attributed this to better roads, housing, electricity, water and jobs near the origins (PMGSY, PMAY-G, Jal Jeevan Mission).
- Development can reduce the need to migrate as well as enable it.
10. The Main Direction Is from Agricultural Areas to Centres of Industry and Commerce
- Indian evidence:
- The dominant inter-state flows run from the agrarian Ganga plain and eastern plateau (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh) to the industrial and service economies of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi NCR, Haryana and Karnataka.
- Net losers in 2001–11 were Uttar Pradesh (−34 lakh) and Bihar (−27 lakh); net gainers were Maharashtra (+24 lakh), Delhi (+15 lakh) and Gujarat (+14 lakh).
- Exceptions:
- Rural → rural labour flows to the Green Revolution belt of Punjab and Haryana and to the tea gardens of Assam.
- Some Bihari labourers in Punjab have begun going home as prospects improve there, an early turn in this flow.
- Keralam now draws workers from other states into its construction and farm sectors.
11. The Major Causes of Migration Are Economic
- For men, strongly validated:
- Work and business were the main reasons for male migrants, rising with distance.
- In the PLFS 2020–21, 22.8% of male migrants moved in search of work and 20.1% to take up work.
- Push: poverty, unemployment, agrarian distress. Pull: industrial, construction and service jobs, higher wages.
- For the population as a whole, not validated:
- Marriage is the single largest reason for migration in India.
- Political and environmental causes also matter: the Partition of 1947, the Kashmiri Pandit exodus (1990), ethnic violence in the North-East, development-induced displacement by dams and mines, floods and river erosion in Assam and Bihar.
Critical Evaluation
- Strengths:
- The first systematic, data-based generalisation about migration. It remains a sound first description of Indian migration: short-distance, rural-origin, economically driven for men, directed to growth poles.
- It anticipated later theory:
- distance decay and the gravity model of George Kingsley Zipf (1946);
- intervening factors, developed by Everett S. Lee (1966) into push, pull and obstacles, among later theories of migration;
- selectivity of migrants by age and sex;
- the link between migration and development that Wilbur Zelinsky (1971) built into the mobility transition.
- Limitations:
- The laws are empirical generalisations, not a theory: they describe patterns but do not explain individual decisions.
- They were drawn from one industrialising country in the 19th century, with free internal movement and expanding factory jobs.
- They ignore:
- marriage migration, central to India;
- political and forced migration;
- state policy;
- networks, caste and kinship, which shape who goes where in India.
- They assume one-way, permanent moves, while much Indian migration is circular and seasonal.
- Modifications needed for India:
- Circular migration: the to-and-fro rhythm of seasonal workers challenges the idea of permanent relocation.
- Informal economy: migrants enter construction, brick kilns and services rather than formal industry.
- Feminisation of labour migration: women increasingly move for work, not only marriage.
- Globalisation: international streams to the Gulf (Keralam, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar) and the West (Punjab, Gujarat, metro professionals) add a long-distance layer Ravenstein treated only briefly.
- Social networks and caste: chain migration along kin and community lines (Ganjam to Surat, Malappuram to the Gulf) can override distance.
- Conclusion:
- Ravenstein’s laws remain largely relevant to India: distance decay, rural origin, economic motive among men and the pull of growth poles all hold in Census and survey data.
- India’s marriage-led female mobility, circular labour migration, network-driven long jumps and slowing post-2011 migration require the laws to be adapted, not discarded.
