Migrants in Urban Informal Sector: Case Study of Five Class-I Towns and Five Villages in Orissa

The present study makes an attempt to find the linkage between rural-to-urban migration and urban informal sector in five class-I towns of Orissa. Using the mixed sampling method, the study finds that rural-to-urban migrants constitute the major share of the urban informal sector workers. Unlike Todaro hypotheses, the study finds that push factors rather than pull factors and higher current money income against expected lifetime income play greater role in migration decision. Furthermore, the contention that only the poorest of the poor in rural areas migrate to urban informal sector is not found to be true.