The Behavioural Economic Perspective of Looking at Distress Migration: A Case Study

Distress migration is a socio-economic issue which has perennially attracted the attention of policy makers, planners, researchers and the media all along. Besides some other anomalies, the most backward KBK region of Odisha has been witnessing the problem of distress/forced migration for quite a long time now. The standard socio-economic theorizing has pinned on the dominant presence and applicability of the traditional push-pull hypothesis in explaining the very nucleus of the problem. But of late, the behavioural dimensions of migration decision making has started staring at the archaic push-factor dominated hypothetical undertone. Moving deep into the core of the monster brings forth the inherent presence of behavioural factors like emotions, cognitive biases, perception-based exclusions and own identity in the overall societal structure of the probable migrants. This study has adopted a direct interview method of collection of primary data from the Balangir district and has used various statistical methods like descriptive statistics, info-graphic analysis of the problem, rank analysis, emotional intelligence scale of measurement, logistic regression and so on to disentangle the behavioural factors influencing the decision to migrate. The study also includes one section on the quantitative beneficial impacts of distress migration in the same study area i.e. the KBK region of Odisha.