On 3 April 2019, Amrita Datta successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 'Continuity and Change: Migration and Development in India. The case of Bihar'.
In her research, Amrita Datta countered dominant academic and policy discourses of low internal migration in India. Drawing on long-term empirical data in a source region, her research found evidence of high and increasing mobility from the eastern Indian state of Bihar in the period 1998 –2011. This rise in the incidence of migration from rural Bihar was accompanied by a change in its determinants.
Over time, individual factors had become more important in explaining migration. At the same time, there was evidence of increased propensity to migrate among the agricultural labouring class. Amrita Datta suggested that these changing determinants of migration from rural Bihar might be understood as a response to rising labour demand in distant urban markets elsewhere in India.
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