THE SOCIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONAL FACTORS RESPONSIBLE FOR OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY IN GILGIT BALTISTAN, PAKISTAN

Abstract

The agriculture sector has been defining the livings of the poor people, giving them employment opportunities in the past, but at present, the agricultural sector has limited its potential to fulfill the increasing demands of employment due to a long list of limiting factors. Therefore, greater emphasis is placed on forces that precipitate youth to switch one occupation over another, especially from farming to non-farming occupations. The present study investigated the sociological and agricultural transformational factors responsible for occupational mobility in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan. The immediate objective of the study was to ascertain the sociological and agricultural transformational factors affect occupational mobility, examine the pattern and mobility, investigate the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and occupational mobility, and A structured questionnaire was used to elicit the related information from professional respondents in three divisions; Gilgit Skardu and Diamar in Gilgit Baltistan transitional province, Pakistan. Through convenient and simple random sampling techniques, data was collected from 408 respondents both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used. After editing and cleaning, a three-fold analysis was undertaken at uni-variate, bivariate, and multivariate levels of coded data to establish the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Data were analyzed with the aid of statistical package (SPSS) version-16.0.  The main findings at bi-variate level analysis show a significant relationship between all sociological and agricultural transformational factors (i.e., socioeconomic factors such as age, educational level of the respondents, educational level of the respondent’s father, family types family size, annual income of the respondent’s work and ownership status size in (Kanals), sociological factors, economic factors, environmental factors, policy-making issues in the agriculture sector, traditional farming system and locational factors. The multivariate analysis showed that the most important and contributing sociological and agricultural transformational attributes in explaining the factors responsible for occupational mobility were educational level, family size family types, land ownership status in (kanals), sociological factors, environmental factors, and policy-making issues in the agriculture sector and locational factors. From the focus groups discussions, it was found that scarcity in land size, coordination with cities after the development of transportation system, better income and job opportunities in cities, hardworking and fewer incentives in agriculture, loss of cooperation among farmers during farming practices, division of land among the siblings, lack of basic facilities such as road, school, health centers, security threads in boarders areas, availability of jobs concerning achieved status in urban areas, lack of policy for seasonal cropping pattern, unemployment in agriculture due to harsh environmental conditions, flawed irrigation system, lack of policy to extend the agricultural services, issues regarding sale out the production to market, lack of modern technologies to increase the production of agriculture and surplus household labor in the family were discussed as factors for farming occupational mobility.