14 Marriage Migration and other Changes

Dr. Sonali Pattnaik

Contents of this Unit

Learning Outcomes

Objectives

• Introduction
• Change and Acculturation: In the purview of Marriage
• Tribal Migration and Marriage
• Impact on Marriage

Learning Outcomes:

After studying this module:

• You shall learn about the social changes taking place in the social structure and institution of marriage in tribal communities.
• You shall have a clear understanding of the concept of acculturation with respect to changes in marriage.
• You shall have a definitive learning relating to the migration and other changes induced in marriage for the tribal communities.

Objectives:

The primary objectives of this module are:

• To give a basic understanding to the students about social changes taking place in marriage
• It also attempts to provide an informative background about migration and its impact on the institution of marriage.

1. Introduction:

In spite of the many affirmative action, tribals in India face insurmountable problems due to low socio-economic conditions, poverty, migration, unemployment, displacement, indebtedness, lack of opportunities, accessibility and awareness of the government programmes which have greatly affected the social structure and institutions like marriage of the tribal communities. Coupled to this, the government and private industrial establishments have initiated mega projects of mining, hydro-electric, industry, business, roads and transport which are leading to the loss of traditional land ownership and livelihood opportunities. This is resulting in large scale migration of rural tribal to urban areas in search of livelihood either temporarily or on permanent basis which in turn resulting into the disturbances in the traditional form of marriage and subsequent traditional socio-psychological marital & family relationships, relationships with neighbor and the adoption of new urban culture. Human Migration and in particular tribal migration with its implications is becoming an important socio-economic problem for the policy makers and government to undertake welfare and development activities.

Thousands of tribal women and especially young girls migrate from their tribal hinterlands to urban city centers mainly in search of employment. They are new to the city life style and environment and find it difficult to make adjustment with the changed situation and environment. They have to face a number of problems in the cities they migrated. In 2004, A report1 named, “A Research Study on Migrant Tribal Women Girls in Ten Cities: A Study of Their Socio-Cultural and Economic Reference to Social Intervention” was submitted to the Planning Commission, Govt. of India which states that marriage is the single most important reason for females for migration. It has already been stated that migration for education is very limited and negligible among the tribals. Only about 3 percent males and 0.8 percent females migrate to cities for higher education. Besides the above-mentioned reasons for migration of tribal women and girls, there are different family reasons, which force them to move from their hinterlands to cities.

A sociological interpretation of migration was given by Clifford Johnson who wrote about the differential aspects of migration. Those who decide to migrate are, largely, the poor peasants and farm laborers who do not have enough resources for survival. A little better off families tend to satisfy themselves with whatever resources they have in the villages of their origin. The economists who has made a study of migration argues that migration is an economic problem as it brings economic imbalances. Land alienation also seems a significant factor in the process of migration of tribals from their hinterlands. The marginal tribal families with smaller land holdings have to leave their native land and go in search of non-agricultural occupations. Exploitation is another factor involved in the process of tribal migration. Robert Redfield’s work on Yucatan (1941) has largely been about progressive disintegration: “The changes in culture that is found among Yucatan appear to ‘go along with’ lessening isolation and homogeneity mainly due to following three reasons: disorganization of the culture, secularization and individualization”.

2. Change and Acculturation: In the purview of Marriage

Change is an undeniable, enduring fact of human life. Some change is pre-programmed and determined by evolutionary and socio-biological forces. The remaining portion is acquired through a multitude of circumstantial influences. The study of acquired and imposed changes forms the bulk of research initiatives in the social and behavioral sciences. Katz (1974) for example categorized change into four types: (a) individual change, including variations in personality; (b) incremental change, which is represented by gradual modifications in the structure of society; (c) radical change, which involves the reorganization and reconstructing of social systems; (d) cultural change in which attitudes, beliefs, and behavior changes.

Acculturation has been used to understand the process of modernization better among various cultures and communities. More recently, acculturation became an important concept for the explanation of varied experiences of ethnic and cultural minorities as international migration, economic globalization, etc. Referring to the social institution of marriage it can be highlighted the 1989, argument of Trimble, the response to culture contact may depend on the person’s situation. This phenomenon can be called “situational acculturation. Mendoza (1984) suggested that an acculturating individual may reject religious practices, assimilates dress customs and integrate food preferences, etc2.

Female migration is believed to be primarily for the purposes of marriage (Bose 1967, p.3), other reasons for migration, such as employment or education are not believed to be of importance. Marriage could be, as Pryor has phrased it, an ‘unavoidable correlate’ of migration, as in India, where marriage migration involves the movement of the bride to the parental household of her spouse, dictated by the practice of village exogamy and group endogamy. Marriage could also be the end or goal of migration, as in West Africa, where the dissatisfaction of young women with marriage prospects in their rural villages has been suggested as a reason for migration-marital migration (Gugler 1969). Marriage could also be an alternative route to socioeconomic status and social mobility-mobility marriage. As Pryor has noted, female migrants tend to return to the rural village if they neither marry nor obtain jobs in the city3.

Apart from the largely spatial type of migration involved in marriage migration, and aside from situations where, traditionally, the strict seclusion of women prevails, female migrates to the urban areas, irrespective of their marital status, are likely to be influenced by perceptions of urban-rural differentials. The importance of marriage as a means of upward social mobility for women, in both developed and developing societies, has been generally acknowledged. It has been suggested that whereas males rely largely on occupational achievement for social mobility, for women, upward social mobility through personal attainment can be supplemented or substituted (for those who marry well) by the acquisition of social status through marriage. Implicit in these explanations of social mobility is an “exchange theory” of marriage that posits a marriage market not dissimilar to the market in which economic goods and services are exchanged–in which females offer the characteristics sought after by males in exchange for the characteristics and status they desire from males. Implicit also is the idea that rational, status-seeking considerations are not unimportant influences in the marital choices of females, underlying assumptions which have not gone unchallenged. The “marital mobility” factor is thus particular to women, and may be of special benefit to women with low social status, who are at a competitive advantage over lower social status men, in the marriage market. A higher social status of males may generally not be reluctant to marry females of lower-status, and the reverse i.e., females of high- status marrying males of lower-status is less probable4.

3. Tribal Migration & Marriage

As mentioned in a report Migration of Tribal Women: Its Socioeconomic Effects – An in-depth Study of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, M.P and Orissa submitted to Planning Commission India, by Society for Regional Research and Analysis reveals, the census data may not fully reflect seasonal or circulatory migration, estimated to be upto 10 million by the National Commission on Rural Labor. Seasonal migrants are usually Scheduled Castes, Tribals and Backward Classes and other highly impoverished sections who go out to work during harvesting seasons or in construction sites, in brick kilns, salt mines, etc. The important observations of these official figures indicate that (i) They tend to underestimate short term movements and thus underestimate or miss seasonal and circular migration which, according to recent village studies account for the bulk of migratory movements for work, (ii) Women’s migration is not adequately captured because the surveys ask for only one reason for migration which is stated as marriage and the secondary reason finding work at the destination may not be mentioned, (iii) They do not capture migration streams that are illegal or border on illegality i.e. trafficking for work and various forms of child labour, (iv) The census of India reported 12.66 million working children but according to the estimates of agencies working against child labour there are roughly 25-30 million child workers in India (ITUC 2007) and Human Rights Watch says that more than 100 million could be working because so many are out of education, (v) They do not capture adequately the movement of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes people mainly because these groups are engaged in short term migration. (vi) The relationship between poverty and migration. Village studies show high levels of migration amongst the poor (not the poorest), official statistics showed that migration is higher among better off groups because they cover mainly permanent migration which has a higher representation of people from more affluent and better educated backgrounds5.

Tribal society is largely egalitarian and tribal women have been equal partners with tribal men in the contribution to household economy. Quite often their women do more physical labour in their agricultural fields and forest than that of the tribal men. Tribal women have usually enjoyed a higher social status in their own communities than Indian women in general. Some of the tribes in sub-Himalayan regions like Khasis of Meghalaya are matriarchal. Tribals were mostly engaged in various occupations like hunting, fishing, gathering of forest products, shifting cultivation to settled agriculture, rural crafts and artisans, but this somehow have been changed due to migration. A very few tribal groups are engaged in non-agricultural activities as mendicants, bards, pastoralists leading a semi-nomadic to nomadic life. Besides routine household work, the tribal women work in the agricultural fields, and forests. The tribals have a negative energy balance, high morbidity rate, and low child survival rate. The tribal believe in many taboos and superstitions and still remain deprived of the benefits from the existing development and welfare programmes as they have moved to a different place6.

Migration for variety of reasons is an age old practice but it is increasing at a faster pace over the last decade. India as a nation has seen a high migration rate in recent years. According to the National Census of India (2001) 30% of the population or 307 million peaople were migrants. Of these, nearly a third had migrated during the previous decade. National Census and the National Sample Survey (NSS) use definitions of migration that are not employment related. The definitions are based upon change in birthplace and change in last usual place of residence. Secondly the main reason for migration and thus miss secondary reasons which are often work related particularly in the case of women, third they count migrant stocks and not flows which are actually more important for policy and finally, they seriously underestimate categories of work that employ migrant workers. There were 65.4 million female migrants and 32.8 million male migrants. However a majority (42.4 million) of female migrants had not migrated for work and had cited marriage as the main reason for the change in residence. Among males, the most important reason for migration was ‘Work/Employment’ cited by 12.3 million male migrants. Rural to rural migration still dominated and accounted for 53.3 million; Rural to urban migration: 20.5 million Urban to rural migration: 6.2 million and Urban to urban migration: 14.3 million. Interstate migration has grown by 53.6%. The total number of inter-state migrants was 42.3 million. Uttar Pradesh (-2.6 million) and Bihar (-1.7 million) were the two states with the largest net out migration. The number of migrants during period 1991-2001 increased by about 22%. Apart from women migrating due to marriage, employment is the main reason for migration.

4. Impact on Marriage

Due to the tread of modernization in these tribal villages, the tribals’ perceptions, thoughts, food habits, daily lifestyles, dresses, festivals, rules and rituals, culture, etc., are all disappearing due to the impact of modernization. As modernization has entered tribal lifestyle, there is a chance to lose the traditions and tribal uniqueness in the long run, if the present scenario prevails. Tribal religious customs and traditions are clearly not easily definable as Islam and Buddhism or any other religion, (Chaudhuri, 1965). Yet at the same time it is not so easy to distinguish between tribal culture and certain type of popular Hindu practices. Hinduism is of course not the only ideological force which has brought about fundamental changes in tribal cultures, as Christian missionaries have also been active in tribal areas, as a result of which a majority of the tribals have been converted to Christianity. The controversy here lies in how these indigenous people will merge with the homogenous Indian society, the so called advanced Indian society with its linguistic religious and caste division which has been never uniform. And it is hard to define where these indigenous groups can be integrated.

Due to advent of modernization many of the tribals have forgotten their age-old tradition like dance, music, songs, folk-tale, their own dialect and many more traditions, the traditional cultural rules governing their society like the rules of marriage, which their children and their future generations should preserve their religious customs and traditions or become modernized in every aspect which can result in vanishing many of their traditional practices. Therefore in a way modernization has brought along with it both positive and negative changes. It is very important for a nation to preserve its culture and tradition for overall growth of the country (Anburaja & Nandagopalan, 2012).

As the impact of migration, it has been observed that large number of educated, uneducated and illiterate tribal women from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal migrate to different parts of the country and metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata in search of gainful employment/casual labour in the unorganized/ organized sector and as household maids for their livelihood. They are often exploited physically and sexually.

It has been found that change in relationship with different family members was noticed in the tribal families having migrant women. Changes have been marked in the cultural process like various rituals, social institutions, social relationships, etc. because of acculturations induced through migration. Some bad impacts that have been reported are in the form of exploitations, adultery, contacting with sexually transmitted diseases, etc. The tribal migrants experienced many, of the specific cases of exploitation by the person/agency, landlords exploitation placement agency at the place of work, and they are also faced with physical abuse, sexual exploitation, separation from the spouse etc.

As mentioned in a Report7, the important observations of these official figures indicate that (i) They tend to underestimate short term movements and thus underestimate or miss seasonal and circular migration which, according to recent village studies account for the bulk of migratory movements for work, (ii) Women’s migration is not adequately captured because the surveys ask for only one reason for migration which is stated as marriage and the secondary reason finding work at the destination may not be mentioned, (iii) They do not capture migration streams that are illegal or border on illegality i.e. trafficking for work and various forms of child labour. Tribals are being alienated from their land and forest due to the ongoing deforestation for hydro-electric power projects, industrial growth and mining activities. The natural resources are being exploited in a way, which leads to a process of gradual displacement and denying the basic right of livelihood to the tribals. Historically, disadvantaged communities such as the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) are heavily represented in migration. The process of social mobility has given a high status to the tribal migrants. The implementation of development schemes for the tribals by different government departments has created a favourable ground for the immobile tribal population to undertake out migration to big cities.