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Lesotho - how to identify migrant-sending HHs? [message #4365] Thu, 14 May 2015 11:32 Go to next message
ibotea is currently offline  ibotea
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Registered: May 2015
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I am using Lesotho DHS 2009 for a study on female labor migration. Most of my analysis relies on individual recodes, where migrants are identified as those who have not always lived in their current place of residence (v104!=95, always). However, the information needed to compare sending vs. non-sending households is only available in the household recode and here it's less clear how to identify migrants.

Based on DHS reports and other entries in this forum, I thought the DHS household roster includes both usual residents (de jure members) and visitors. The term de facto members is also used to identify which of the individuals listed in the roster, either residents or visitors, slept in the house the previous night. Therefore, "visitors" are de facto but not de jure members, whereas "migrants" would be de jure, but not de facto members. Is my understanding correct?

When working with the data, however, I realized that 23% of household heads were not de jure members (hv102_*, usual resident). According to the definition above, this would qualify them as visitors, but almost none of them had slept in the house the previous night (hv103_*) either. In what circumstances would someone be listed in the roster if they were not usual residents (de jure) and they hadn't slept there the night before (de facto)? Could it be that migrants were inaccurately recorded as not being usual residents?

Thank you!

Ioana
Re: Lesotho - how to identify migrant-sending HHs? [message #4383 is a reply to message #4365] Mon, 18 May 2015 11:01 Go to previous message
Trevor-DHS is currently offline  Trevor-DHS
Messages: 787
Registered: January 2013
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In most cases you are unlikely to be able to identify sending households from DHS data. Most migrants who moved from a household are not listed at all in the household. Some who relocate temporarily or migrate for work, but return to their family are listed, but most who have moved away from an area are not listed.

In the DHS standard, only those who either usually live in the household (de jure) or who slept in the household last night (de facto) are listed in the household schedule. That is, anyone who is neither de facto nor de jure should not appear in the household listing. In Lesotho, though, there is a lot of migration for work both within Lesotho and into South Africa and other neighboring countries. In this case the decision was made to include people who are part of the family, but who do not usually live in the household nor slept in the household the previous night. In many cases this is the head of the household.

It is not that migrants were inaccurately recorded as not usual residents. The general rule is that if someone has moved away for 6 months or more they are not considered as usual residents. You can see a tabulation of this data in table 2.11 in the Lesotho report.

[Updated on: Wed, 27 May 2015 10:53]

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