India Compares Salaries. Gay Men Compare Futures.

Can social acceptance and legal recognition shape migration aspirations as much as jobs and salaries? A survey of 126 urban gay men in India suggests they might.

"I think it's time we seriously started looking at moving abroad." A friend said this to me a couple of years ago. I thought I knew what he meant.

Better salaries. Better jobs. Better careers.

That's how we have come to understand migration in India. Every conversation about brain drain eventually becomes a conversation about economics. We count engineers leaving. We count doctors leaving. We count entrepreneurs, researchers and students leaving. Between 2011 and 2023, more than 1.7 million Indians renounced their Indian citizenship. Yet the question almost never changes.

I asked him the obvious question - "You mean the job market?"

He looked at me and said, "No. I mean living with my boyfriend."

Only then did it strike me that this conversation is an aftermath of the Supreme Court declining to recognize same-sex marriage and leaving the question to Parliament.

That answer stayed with me because I kept hearing versions of it from others. People weren't comparing salaries. They were comparing futures.

That's when a more uncomfortable question emerged: Has India reduced brain drain to an economic problem alone? Has it never considered that some citizens might be leaving for reasons economics cannot solve?

I wrote to the Ministry of External Affairs arguing that this possible relationship deserved examination. I never heard back.

I looked for data.

There wasn't any.

So I decided to collect it myself.

Rather than simply asking whether gay men wanted to migrate abroad, I wanted to understand why. Was migration primarily an economic decision? Or did perceptions of social acceptance, legal recognition and belonging also shape how respondents imagined their futures?

I conducted an anonymous online survey of 126 gay-identifying respondents with significant urban India experience. The sample is urban, educated, English-speaking and digitally connected, so it does not represent all gay men in India. Yet if migration aspirations are this pronounced among relatively privileged respondents, the findings warrant closer attention.

Almost 85% had spent most of their lives in metropolitan or Tier 1 cities. Nearly 98% had completed at least an undergraduate degree. Most were either employed or self-employed.

In other words, these were not respondents excluded from India's economy.

Yet 87% had either considered living outside India or were already doing so.

That alone should make us pause.

Half said they would still prefer living abroad even if income and career opportunities were similar. Another 44% said they were likely or very likely to settle permanently in a developed Western country.

So let us be honest. This is not only about better jobs.

Because if some of India's most educated and economically mobile citizens are imagining futures elsewhere, economics alone may not be the whole story.

Figure 1: Respondents could select up to three factors. Stronger LGBTQ+ legal rights, public infrastructure, jobs and social acceptance all rank highly as migration influences.

When respondents were asked to select the top 3 factors that influenced their desire to live abroad, the top answer was stronger LGBTQ+ legal rights and protections, selected by 63%. Better public infrastructure followed at 60%. Jobs and career opportunities came close behind at 58%, and greater social acceptance or freedom to live openly stood at close 55%.

Jobs matter. Infrastructure matters. But rights are not a decorative issue waiting politely at the end of development. They are part of the calculation. A country cannot keep asking why people leave while refusing to ask what kinds of lives they are allowed to build if they stay.

Figure 2: A majority said their desire to live abroad would decrease if India became more accepting and legally recognized same-sex relationships.

The second figure is even harder to dismiss. When asked what would happen if India became more accepting of gay men and legally recognized same-sex relationships, about 62% said their desire to live abroad would decrease.

Everyday experiences mattered too. Nearly 74% reported bullying, harassment or verbal abuse because they were perceived to be gay, while 62% said they had felt pressure to hide or change their sexual orientation. Among those who had experienced bullying, 56% said they would still prefer living abroad even if income and career opportunities were similar in India and abroad, compared with 33% among those who had not.

These findings do not prove that discrimination causes migration aspirations. They do suggest that for many respondents, the decision to imagine a future elsewhere begins long before a job offer.

The “lived abroad” question adds nuance. Among respondents who had never lived outside India for more than six months, 54% still said they would prefer abroad if income and career opportunities were similar. So the West is not only a lived comparison. It is also an imagined future. It is shaped by friends' stories, social media, dating cultures, legal developments, workplace environments and the belief that somewhere else, a relationship might not need constant explanation.

Respondents who had lived abroad were more likely to imagine settling there permanently, suggesting that experience turns aspiration into possibility. (as shown in figure 3 below) 

Figure 3:  Even respondents who have never lived abroad show strong outward aspiration, while those who have lived abroad are more likely to imagine permanent Western settlement.

The survey does not romanticise the West. Some respondents were clear that migration also means visas, cost, distance from family, racism, loneliness and uncertainty.

No country is automatically safe. No border crossing magically produces belonging. But when your own country refuses to recognize the person you may want to build a life with, the comparison begins long before the flight ticket is booked.

When Citizenship Stops Feeling Complete

This is where the idea of 'sexual citizenship' becomes useful. Citizenship is not only about passports, voting and taxes (as the government often tells us). It is also about whether people can openly build recognized relationships and families. 

Many respondents in this survey are citizens in the formal sense. They study, work, rent homes, pay taxes and participate in urban India. But when they imagine partnership, family, inheritance, adoption or old age, that citizenship begins to look partial.

They are citizens when they work. Citizens when they pay. Citizens when they represent India abroad. But when they ask whether their relationship counts, the law suddenly becomes cautious.

While the survey told one story, the regression analysis tested whether that story held up.

Figure 4: After accounting for age, city type, relationship status, prior experience abroad and reported exclusion, stronger concern about legal non-recognition remains associated with higher migration aspiration.

To test this relationship, I created a migration aspiration index using three survey questions: whether respondents had considered living abroad, where they would prefer to live if income and careers were similar, and how likely they were to settle permanently in a developed Western country. A regression model tested whether agreement with the statement "lack of legal recognition affects how I imagine my future in India" predicted migration aspirations while controlling for age, education, income, relationship status, experience abroad and discrimination.

The result was modest but meaningful. Each one-step increase in agreement with the legal-recognition statement was associated with a 0.305-point increase in the migration aspiration index.

The model does not prove causation. It simply suggests that legal recognition remains linked to migration aspiration even after other visible factors are considered.

The open-ended answers made the numbers less abstract. Respondents wrote about marriage, adoption, inheritance, pressure to marry women, the difficulty of introducing partners, and the exhaustion of editing one’s life in public. Others mentioned pollution, public services, taxes, infrastructure and work culture.

The point is not that sexuality explains everything. It is that sexuality is part of everything.

That is how exclusion often works. Not always as one dramatic event, but as a constant tax on imagination.

Before You Dismiss These Findings

The study has obvious limits. It does not represent all gay men in India. It does not speak for rural, lower-income, non-English-speaking or less digitally connected people. It measures migration aspirations and perceptions, not migration itself.

But the limitation is also the warning.

If urban, educated and relatively privileged gay men still struggle to imagine legal and social security in India, what exactly are we expecting from those with fewer resources and no realistic option to leave?

Today India's debate on brain drain is almost entirely economic. We ask why engineers leave. Why doctors leave. Why researchers leave. Why founders leave.

Perhaps we have been asking the wrong questions.

Because people do not build futures using salaries alone.

They build them using relationships, recognition and the confidence that tomorrow can exist where they already belong.

This study does not prove that India is experiencing a queer brain drain. It does suggest something more unsettling. That for many respondents, the decision to imagine a future elsewhere begins long before a visa application.

It begins with a quieter calculation.

Not Where can I earn more?

But Where can I build a life?

And perhaps that should force us to rethink brain drain itself. If India's most educated citizens increasingly leave because they cannot imagine their futures here, then the problem is no longer only economic.

It is also social.

It is also legal.

Instead of asking why talented Indians leave, perhaps the more uncomfortable question is this - What kind of country are they being asked to stay in?

This draft is based on original primary research conducted by the author as part of the Data for Communication module in the Master of Science in Strategic Communications program. The survey questionnaire remains open and can be accessed here: Survey