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There are some important characteristics of the migrants and migration. An important characteristic is the age selectivity of the migrants. Generally, young people are more mobile. Most migration studies, especially in developing countries, have found that rural-urban migrants are predominantly young adults. It is obvious that migration for employment takes place mostly at the young adult ages. Also a major part of the female migration consequential to marriage occurs at the young adult ages. The female migration in India is largely sequential to marriage, because it is a Hindu custom to take brides from another village (village exogamy). Thus people have a tendency to move when they are between their teens and their mid-thirties (15-35 years) than at other ages.
Another important characteristic is that the migrants have a tendency to move to those places where they have contacts and where the previous migrants serve as links for the new migrants, and this chain is thus formed in the process, and is usually called chain migration. They usually have kinship chains and networks of relatives and friends who help them in different ways. In some cases, the migrants not only tend to have the same destination but also tend to have the same occupation. For example, in certain hotels in Jaipur almost all the workers belong to one particular sub-region of Kumaon. The agricultural labourers in Punjab and Haryana are mainly from Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The male migrants from rural to urban and urban to urban, employment were the most important reason. Education accounted only for about 3 to 8 per cent of migration according to these migration streams. Among women, as expected, marriage was the most important reason for migration, followed by associational migration. Employment and education accounted for a very small proportion of the females.