Over its twenty-five-year history, the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) has emerged as a pioneering model in migration research, providing a comprehensive and replicable methodological framework. Employing stratified systematic random sampling technique, KMS effectively captures a representative sample of households, including international migrants, internal migrants, and non-migrants. One of the key strengths of KMS is its longitudinal panel study, conducted every five years since its inception in 1998, which has completed eleven waves of data. This panel design allows for the tracking of migration patterns over time and a detailed understanding of migration’s long-term effects on households and communities. The success of KMS as a model has led to its replication in six Indian states, expanding the understanding of migration trends and their socio-economic impacts across diverse regions. Its comprehensive framework equips policymakers with the data needed to design interventions that address the distinct needs of both migrant and non-migrant populations, contributing to informed, effective policies for socio-economic development.

Professor S. Irudaya Rajan is Chair of the International Institute of Migration and Development, Kerala. He is the Founder Editor in Chief of Migration and Development (Sage) and the editor of two Routledge series – India Migration Report and South Asia Migration Report and lead editor of Springer Series – South-South Migration. He has coordinated nine large-scale migration surveys in Kerala since 1998 (with K.C. Zachariah) and replicated the Kerala model of migration surveys in other states, including Goa (2008), Punjab (2009), Tamil Nadu (2015), and Odisha (2023) and has been instrumental in similar surveys in Gujarat (2011), and Jharkhand (2023).

Date: 13 October 2025

Time: 10:00 am (CEST)

Place: Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Landshuter Str. 4, Room 109 (1st floor), 93047 Regensburg

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