occupational choices, networks, and transfers, arup mitra

(11): behaving in most rational way

(19): imp-- Harris-Todaro (rural poor will migrate) vs. Banerjee (m-class will migrate, b/c need resources for the move). Mitra's argument: from rural non-farm sector both the poor and middle-class migrate to urban areas.

(20): the semi-urban area

(21): declining land-man ratio pushes labour out

(21): industrial workers live in slums, too

(23): the push factor is very strong -- informal sector looks attractive, even when bad, b/c prospects in rural areas are worse

(24): strong preference to reside near work place in slum

(24): int--heavy dependence on kin/ethnic networks, to get job [implications for resistance? substantively different from other periods, strata?] here argument is yes--slum residents especially anxious to anchor themselves in the 'known'

(26, 79): consumption 'bias' against housing [silly to see this as anything but the effect of extreme poverty]

(27): supply of housing not kept pace

(28, 107-109): silly-- remit wages in order to keep kith and kin from entering the urban workforce [bizarre. and actually offers no evidence in the book. quite silly--classic prisoner's dilemma problem, this is, resolved in opposite direction]

(36): search for jobs is more urban-based, takes place once in city. for new migrants, job-search is conducted through networks

(38): against the 'overbunization' thesis--informal sector jobs as 'pull factors' [but push-pull are defined in relative terms. these are still terrible. people are being 'pushed out', in that sense]

(46): access to manufacturing jobs becomes available after a few years, when migrants develop their own access to information

(56, 139): imp-- longer-duration migrants are less likely to be in casual employment [but here there is the larger issue, with longitudinal conclusions--how do we know that everything about the waves of migration will be the same? the observations are not 'independent', in that sense, when extrapolating. you could well be measuring a different 'wave' wrt to ethnicity, something like that. the larger problem with 'mobility' framing is that, unless the job structure is changing or productivity increasing (for which no evidence is offered), mobility solves none of our problems]

(62): imp-- regular employment is more stable, but middling wages--self-employment is unstable, but yields higher earnings [not best interpreted as higher levels of stratification in the latter viz-a-viz the former]

(63): physical segmentation of the labour market

(65): imp--migration is rational, based on expectation of 'upward income mobility'. reduction of intensity of poverty [(1) clearly it would be rational even without expectation of upward mobility, given intensity of poverty in countryside; (2) no evidence of upward mobility in the data, really--since not clear what 'past' income refers to]

(67): int--relation of industry to informal sector can vary. on the one-hand, inverse model, where industry cuts workers, and they go to informal sector. on the other hand, proportional, where industry generates linkages that are served by informal sector.

(69): some support for idea that workers move from casual/informal to salaried employmemt

(72): kin/ethnic networks, again

(76-77): imp--evidence for upward mobility. [needs scrutiny--controlled for inflation? how long ago is "past"?]

(115): in sum--remittances sent w/ strong sense of reciprocation, capability of remitter, education, instability. household size hurts remittances.

(118): many reasons to stay at home (security of home, household responsibilites) for women, which is why they put a special premium on working close to home

(121): no occupational mobility in other studies [and given the problems in this study...]

(123): women more likely to work, after lived in city for a while

(128): confusion re: per capita consumption and salary

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[1] implication for politics of this kind of migration. especially desperate --> especially tribal/clannish politics? as 'vote bank'?

[2] low-productivity and high-productivity = informal and formal. they seem synonymous, in this survey, but is there any reason that this is necessarily the case?