Study COVID’s impact on migration in Kerala, says expert

‘Pattern of migration and remittances have undergone vast changes’

With conflicting reports emerging on mass reverse migration of Keralites from Gulf countries and falling foreign remittances, experts have called for a study on the impact of COVID-19 on short-term and long-term migration in Kerala. The last study on migration in the State was done in 2018. An estimated 14-15 lakh people out of the 21 lakh non-resident Keralites may have come back from the Gulf region since the beginning of the pandemic in mid-March 2020. “The figure could be based on the repatriation flight data accessed by the State and conveys only one-way flow of return migrants. At least five lakh could have possibly migrated to new destinations or gone back to the same countries,” S. Irudaya Rajan, chairman, International Institute of Migration and Development, told The Hindu. In this context, Dr. Rajan said the prevailing migration patterns would have to be re-examined as migration from Kerala to the Gulf countries had been diminishing over the years due to the cumulative effect of demographic change, decline in wages in the Gulf, decline in oil price, and the nationalisation policies of the GCC countries.