For decades, Kerala’s relationship with the Gulf has largely been celebrated through the language of remittances. Millions of Keralites have travelled to the Middle East, earned money and returned home after years abroad, helping transform households and contributing significantly to the state’s economy.
But migration does not move money alone.
It can also move ideas, attitudes and social norms.
A World Bank study examining return migration to Kerala has found that migrants returning from Saudi Arabia, an Islamic country whose social and institutional environment has historically been shaped by conservative interpretations of Islam, exhibit substantially more conservative attitudes towards women and gender-based violence than people without migration experience.
The study, Beyond Money: Does Migration Experience Transfer Gender Norms? Empirical Evidence from Kerala, India, examines whether migrants bring back the social norms they encounter in their destination countries. The findings point to a striking difference between Saudi Arabia and other Gulf destinations.
The researchers analysed 256 return migrants from Saudi Arabia, 322 return migrants from other Gulf countries and 8,614 non-migrants in Kerala. Rather than treating all Gulf migration as one category, the researchers deliberately separated Saudi Arabia from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE because of differences in the social environments migrants encounter.
The distinction produced a stark result.
Returning migrants from Saudi Arabia were significantly more conservative than non-migrants on attitudes towards gender-based violence and extreme attitudes concerning violence against women. By contrast, migrants returning from the other Gulf countries generally showed the opposite pattern.
Saudi Arabia Was The Outlier
The World Bank paper itself identifies Saudi Arabia as considerably more conservative than many other Gulf countries in its treatment of women’s social roles.
The researchers point to differences in the social environment across Gulf countries, noting that Saudi Arabia has a more extreme interpretation of women’s roles in society linked to the religious sect practised there. They also note that Saudi Arabia has historically had less exposure to international populations than some other Gulf countries.
This makes the Saudi finding particularly significant.
The researchers were not simply asking whether Gulf migration makes Keralites conservative. They were examining whether the destination’s cultural environment matters.
And Saudi Arabia stood apart.
The study found that, compared with people who had never migrated, Saudi returnees’ attitudes towards gender-based violence were approximately three standard deviations more conservative. Their attitudes on extreme gender norms, including attitudes surrounding sexual assault and physical violence against women, were approximately 2.6 standard deviations more conservative.
For migrants returning from the other Gulf countries, the results moved in the opposite direction: they were less conservative than non-migrants on these measures.
That contrast is arguably the most important finding in the study.
What Exactly Are These “Conservative” Attitudes?
The researchers constructed indexes covering general gender attitudes, household decision-making, gender-based violence and extreme attitudes relating to violence against women.
The responses reveal attitudes that go far beyond traditional views about who should earn money or make decisions inside a household.
The study found that around 70% of Saudi return migrants agreed with the proposition that women’s “immodest” dressing provokes men to behave badly towards them.
Nearly half agreed with the proposition that when a woman is raped, she usually did something careless to put herself in that situation.
Around 68% agreed that a woman who has been sexually assaulted loses the respect of the community.
The study also found that approximately 53% of Saudi return migrants believed that a woman or girl who goes out alone after dark is to blame if she is molested.
Around 52% agreed that in a rape case it is necessary to question whether the female victim is promiscuous or has a bad reputation.
These attitudes amount to more than conventional conservatism. They reflect victim-blaming and the social policing of women’s behaviour.
The Hidden “Social Remittance”
The World Bank researchers use the term “social remittances” to describe the transfer of ideas, behaviour and social norms from destination countries back to migrant-origin communities.
The concept is important because migration is normally discussed almost entirely in economic terms.
A migrant sends money home. A house is built. Children receive an education. Families move up economically.
But migrants also return with experiences and ideas acquired abroad.
The paper notes that migration can transmit cultural norms involving law, religion, dress codes, social and moral values and attitudes towards women. It specifically explores whether exposure to conservative societies can negatively affect gender attitudes after migrants return home.
In Kerala’s case, the Saudi findings suggest that the social remittance can sometimes be deeply conservative.
Why The Saudi–Other Gulf Difference Matters
It would be inaccurate to claim that Gulf migration automatically produces conservative gender attitudes.
The study does not say that.
In fact, its findings demonstrate the opposite.
Return migrants from countries such as the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman did not display the same pattern as Saudi returnees. On several measures, they were actually less conservative than non-migrants.
That makes the Saudi result harder to dismiss as a generic consequence of migration.
If migration itself were responsible for producing conservative attitudes, one would expect returnees from the different Gulf states to show broadly similar outcomes.
Instead, the country of exposure appears to matter.
And Saudi Arabia, with its historically conservative Islamic social framework and more restrictive interpretation of women’s roles, emerges as the clear outlier in the study.
Kerala’s Modernisation Has Another Side
This finding presents an uncomfortable contradiction.
Kerala is widely associated with high literacy, social development, education and relatively strong indicators of women’s advancement. At the same time, the state has maintained one of India’s largest and longest-standing migration corridors to the Gulf.
The World Bank research suggests that economic modernisation and exposure to international migration do not necessarily produce uniformly liberal social attitudes.
A migrant can return with greater wealth, new skills and improved economic standing while also returning with more conservative ideas about women’s behaviour, sexuality and autonomy.
Migration, in other words, can modernise one part of society while reinforcing traditional attitudes in another.
The Issue Is Not Migration. It Is What Comes Back With It.
The answer is not to demonise Gulf migrants or portray migration as inherently harmful.
The World Bank study does not make such a claim.
Its central contribution is more nuanced: migration can transmit social norms, and those norms depend partly on the society in which migrants live and work.
Saudi Arabia’s case is particularly important because the study finds a measurable association between return migration from that country and more conservative gender attitudes in Kerala.
The paper therefore adds an important dimension to Kerala’s migration story.
The Gulf has sent billions in remittances back to Kerala.
But migrants can also bring something else home; the values and social attitudes they encounter abroad.
And when the destination is a deeply conservative Islamic society such as Saudi Arabia, the World Bank evidence suggests that some of those returning “social remittances” can reinforce restrictive attitudes towards women.
Kerala’s migration story, therefore, cannot be measured only in money. Sometimes, the most consequential remittances are the ones that cannot be deposited in a bank.
Migrants returning to Kerala from Saudi Arabia tend to exhibit conservative values re: gender-based violence & extreme attitudes pertaining to the perpetration of physical violence against women–when compared with those who have no migration experience https://t.co/Y72htlkQEP pic.twitter.com/698ZImfAFV
— Milan Vaishnav (@MilanV) August 21, 2026
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