Internal student migration in India: Impact of the COVID-19 crisis

The education sector in India was among the most affected sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. While considerable attention has been paid to informal workers' return or reverse migration to their home communities, not much has been reported about the challenges faced by migrant students. Using a mixed-method approach, the current study presents an overview of internal student migration in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic using data from the 2001 and 2011 Census of India and the 2007–2008 National Sample Survey Organization, and discusses challenges faced by selected migrant learners during the COVID-19 pandemic based on primary research. Based on the census data, nearly 3.3 million migrants in India move for study reasons with 2.9 million migrating within the state (with the duration of residence less than five years) from their last residence within India. The pattern of female student migration suggests an increasingly localized interdistrict migration. Findings from the qualitative data indicate that during the pandemic, students had compromised learning and placement experience, inadequate digital resources and pressure to repay loans. Student migrants experienced varying degrees of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic based on their destination and migration stream. © Scalabrini Migration Center 2023.

Expectations for household food security in the coming decades: A global scenario

Global food security is threatened by the confluence of increasing demand for food due to a growing population and the inability of the food production system to meet the increasing demand due to climate change, worsening soil fertility, and challenges to water availability. These factors jeopardize achieving the Sustainable Development Goals such as Zero Hunger, food and nutrition security, and climate action, particularly in developing countries. Vulnerable and marginalized groups in these countries, such as women, widows, people with disabilities, and resource-poor households living in vulnerable areas, suffer disproportionately from food insecurity. This inequality is likely to increase in the coming decades due to disproportionate access to resources. Major economic shocks such as the global food price rise of 2007-08 and the Covid-19 pandemic have weakened the fight against ensuring nutritional and food security and achieving the SDGs goal of Zero Hunger and poverty. COVID-19 further exhibits the existing gap in access to health systems and highlights the crucial need for a well-designed public safety net to cope with any unexpected shocks in the future. Achieving food security requires several transformations in agricultural as well as socio-economic policies such as targeting susceptible communities, promoting climate-smart agricultural practices, improving the resilience of resource-poor households, setting up a strong social safety nets program, reducing post-harvest losses and food waste, and ensuring an efficient food distribution mechanism. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.