Migration’s Hidden Side: Why Saudi Returnees In Kerala Show More Conservative Gender Views

For decades, Kerala’s migration story has largely been told through the money its workers send home: remittances that support households, raise living standards and shape the state’s economy. However, a World Bank research paper points to another, less examined export and import of migration, social attitudes.

The study found that migrants returning to Kerala after working in Saudi Arabia show significantly more conservative attitudes towards gender-based violence and extreme behaviour against women than people with no migration experience. By contrast, those returning from other Gulf countries show relatively less conservative attitudes on these measures.

The findings of the paper, Beyond Money: Does Migration Experience Transfer Gender Norms? Empirical Evidence from Kerala, India suggest that the consequences of migration may extend beyond wages and remittances, with migrants potentially carrying social norms acquired abroad back into their communities.

Notably, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has urged “serious introspection” and called such reports "disturbing". He added that Kerala has long been host to a liberal, progressive practice of Islam, fully in tune with the coexistence and communal harmony prevalent across the state.

A Sharp Divide In Attitudes

The descriptive findings also showed notable differences between the two groups of return migrants. About 43% of migrants returning from Saudi Arabia believed a man had the right to beat his wife if she disobeyed him, compared with around 37% of those returning from other Gulf countries.

On attitudes surrounding sexual violence, roughly 70% of Saudi return migrants said women’s “immodest” dressing could provoke men to behave badly, compared with 61.4% of returnees from other Gulf countries.

Nearly half of Saudi returnees said that a woman who was raped had usually done something careless to put herself in that situation, compared with 42.5% among other Gulf returnees.

The study also found that around 68% of Saudi return migrants believed that a woman who had been sexually assaulted would lose respect in the community, compared with 59.6% among migrants returning from other Gulf countries.

"Kerala is proud of its record of educating Muslim girls and women to the same levels as boys and men. The import of conservative and even reactionary attitudes and customs from abroad, as suggested by this report, is fundamentally at variance with what Kerala has long been about. This requires serious introspection and internal discussion within the Muslim community as well," Tharoor wrote on X.

Additionally, the researchers cautioned that the broader sample showed conservative attitudes across several measures, but the results suggest that migration experience in Saudi Arabia was associated with particularly pronounced differences.

Saudi Arabia And The Rest Of The Gulf

The research drew a distinction between Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf destinations, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. According to the study, the differences matter.

The report stated that they were also more conservative by 2.6 standard deviations on what the researchers classified as “extreme” gender attitudes, including views related to sexual assault and physical violence against women.

Migrants returning from other Gulf countries, meanwhile, were less conservative by around 0.5 standard deviation on gender-based violence and by 0.7 standard deviation on extreme attitudes. The study noted, however, that these differences were not statistically significant from the attitudes of non-migrants.

The contrast underlines the paper’s central argument: migration does not produce a uniform social effect. The norms migrants may encounter and potentially carry home, can vary significantly depending on where they work.

However, many social media users questioned the study’s methodology, pointing to its relatively small sample of Saudi returnees and the fact that the underlying survey data date back to 2013. Critics argued that the findings may not fully account for pre-existing differences between migrants who chose Saudi Arabia and those who migrated elsewhere.

Beyond Remittances

The Kingdom has long been one of the major destinations for Keralite migrants, while remittances from the country remain an important source of money sent to India. RBI data showed Saudi Arabia accounted for 6.7% of India’s inward remittances in 2023-24.

However, the study argued that policy discussions have largely focused on financial remittances, while paying less attention to what researchers describe as “social remittances”, the transfer of ideas, behaviours, values and social norms from destination countries to migrants’ communities of origin.

Notably, the study used data from the Kerala Migration Survey 2013, which covered 14,575 households across all 14 districts and 63 taluks in the state. For its analysis, the researchers compared 322 returning migrants from Gulf countries excluding Saudi Arabia, 256 returnees from Saudi Arabia and 8,614 non-migrants.

They were asked 35 questions which included views on whether women should work outside the home, whether men should have the final say in household decisions, whether women should tolerate aggressive behaviour to preserve a family and attitudes surrounding sexual assault and violence against women.

Why Destination Matters

The paper linked these differences to the possibility that migrants are exposed to different social and cultural environments depending on their destination. It noted that Saudi Arabia has historically been more conservative than several other Gulf countries regarding women’s roles in society.

Other Gulf states also differ significantly in their demographic composition and exposure to international populations. The researchers divided migrants into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf destinations specifically to test whether these differences in destination environments could be reflected in the attitudes migrants bring back to Kerala.

Their findings indicate that migration experience may act as a channel through which social norms travel across borders, just as money does. The report stated that the findings carry implications for Kerala and other regions that send large numbers of temporary workers overseas.

The paper recommended proactive measures to address extreme gender attitudes, including stronger responses to gender-based violence, non-discriminatory employment regulations, and education and communication programmes.

It also pointed to institutions that support aspiring, current and returning migrants as possible channels for awareness programmes and continued engagement with migrant households.

The larger message, according to the study, is that migration may bring home more than money. What migrants experience abroad, the research suggests, can also travel back and in Kerala, the social impact appears to depend significantly on where the journey took them.