Return Migration of Rural Youth: Decision Making Style Analysis

Migration is a common livelihood strategy of rural youths. It is a complex phenomenon and a key component in rural households, which focus on minimizing risks and diversifying household income. Rural migrants in particular engage more frequently in temporary or circular migration, traditionally linked to the seasonal calendars of agriculture, the backbone of rural economies else they permanently migrate back to their place of origin. Return migration is defined as the “voluntary movement of migrants back to their place of origin”. Return migration has been becoming a very common phenomenon in rural areas; it is the logical consequences of the successful achievement of all migration-related goals and targets. In present study 180 return migrated rural youths of southern India were purposively selected to study the decision making styles of the rural youths who migrated, return migrated and involved in agripreneurship development. Decision-making style has been defined as “a habitual pattern of individuals use in decision-making” the salient finding were migrants while deciding himself/herself for migration, return migration and to involve in agripreneurship had planned very carefully (WMS 91.35), by following their own intuition (WMS 86.62) and in a logical manner (WMS 76.50). This study also proved that the decision making style of rural youths ranges from methodical and systematic process followed in order to arrive at a decision which would yield the best possible outcome for the individual.