Determinants of labour migration decisions

The research presented in this volume explains which factors determine the migration and related household decisions in rural areas of Indonesia’s East Java Province. Based on the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM), the study analyses rural-to-urban as well as international migration focusing on Malang District, and, as a result, identifies factors, which are essential for the design of policies and programs aiming to promote rural development. It is based on primary data collected by a field survey across 12 villages in the sub-district of Wagir, and secondary data which came out from a survey carried out by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 7,677 villages. The results demonstrate that institutional factors i. e. market access, access to credits and infrastructure, especially water resources, have positive impacts on rural households’ decision not to engage in migration. The same applies to government subsidies, namely health insurance. Furthermore, the share of non-agriculture land, education facilities, share of farming households in the village and share of the population living in poverty have a positive impact on international migration. Working abroad is helping women to improve their social status. Due to family pressures they become important backbones for increasing household incomes, whether they are single or married, which causes them to migrate for work. The results suggest that the local governments could significantly contribute to reduce migration by taking measures to improve market access and credit access which would stimulate investments to increase agricultural productivity and income of rural households.