Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the recent introduction of digital technologies in the implementation of migrant worker welfare schemes in India. Based on fieldwork on construction labour in Bengaluru, it explores the efficacy and broader implications of the digitalization of social protection measures.

Paper long abstract:

Following the migrant labour crisis precipitated by the Covid-19 lockdown in India in 2020, both the central and state governments introduced a range of new schemes and policies aimed at improving the social welfare and protection of migrant workers. This paper focuses on the employment of digital technologies in these measures and programmes, drawing on an ongoing study of migrant construction labour in Bengaluru. The paper is situated within two main bodies of literature: (1) labour informality and migration, and (2) the digitalization of governance in India and the Global South. We examine the design and administration of digital identification and registration systems by different agencies; their deployment via smartphone apps and other technologies; and their effectiveness in improving workers’ social rights and well-being. The paper highlights the multiplication of schemes at various levels and the dependence of governments on third-party agencies (especially NGOs) for their implementation. We find that the efficacy of these schemes has been hampered by insufficient or poorly trained staff; poor design of platforms and software; inadequate technical literacy of government workers; lack of portability of benefits; and the inability of many migrant workers to access the documents and technologies required by these schemes. Combined with the digitalization of inspection and compliance requirements that will be introduced under the new labour codes in India, these lacunae may make labour policies and programmes aimed at protecting the social and labour rights of migrant workers even less workable than they are at present.

Paper short abstract:

This study explores the challenges for short-term migrants accessing welfare in India, revealing structural deficiencies in sub-national welfare. It emphasises the need for welfare delivery to account for the intersection between temporal nature of migration and informality.

Paper long abstract:

Short-term and circular migrants are often excluded from functional welfare provisioning in destination states. While internal migrants are nominally protected by freedom of movement and the right to work in India, this article explores the disjuncture between the formal and realized citizenship experiences of migrants claiming welfare. Drawing on a mixed-method qualitative study of ethnographic research and a sample survey in Delhi and Kerala, it presents the everyday lived experiences of migrants accessing welfare in India. By elucidating the complex labyrinth of the Indian welfare ecosystem at the sub-national level, the study highlights the structural and experiential deficiencies that emerge at the destination state for migrant workers to access welfare.

The analysis of migrant construction workers' access to labour schemes reveals differences in the conditionalities and modalities of registration and claim, creating differential sub-national welfare ecosystems for migrants within the nation-state. These ecosystems create a knowledge and administrative deficit that keeps migrants at the fringe of the welfare state. Findings from the original sample survey with migrant workers also indicate the incompatibility in the conditionalities of welfare with the temporal existence of migrants in the destination states. The findings from the study advocate the need for welfare policies to account for the intersection of the temporality of migration and informality to create an effective and inclusive citizenship pathway.

Paper short abstract:

We examine the legal mechanisms for compensation against industrial accidents for migrant and informal workers in India. We discuss limitations of the law, how workers and labor organizations navigate them, and the potential of more widespread use of the legal protections for enhanced worker safety.

Paper long abstract:

Informal workers in India navigate 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) conditions and precarious employments. Many of them are internal migrants from rural to urban India, navigating everyday risks at work. Small and big accidents are common, though few official records exist of these phenomena. In this paper, we examine legal protections against such risks to health and safety of workers. Through long-term ethnography, legislative and judicial analysis, we discuss the legal mechanism of litigation and compensation available to informal and migrant workers facing occupational injuries under the Employees Compensation Act, 1923. However, workers experience making claims under the Act challenging, especially in terms of procedural delays and evidence generation (like employment, police, and medical record). As a result, ad-hoc extra-judicial payments wherein compensation amounts are far lower than legal compensation, are dominant in Indian informal industry. We take the case of a labour organisation’s initiative for enhanced legal awareness, aid, and mediation, among rural youth who migrate to the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra to work in manufacturing and construction sectors. We show how this initiative attempts to make the Act more accessible for informal and migrant workers. Workers’ assertion of legal rights, we argue, has become doubly urgent. In the larger context of rising accidents alongside a shrinking of labour laws by the Indian state, we argue for an enhanced understanding of expanding legal accessibility, awareness and use by migrant, informal workers

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the results of a major survey of migrant entrepreneurs in Cape Town’s informal food economy, focusing on the role that exclusion potentially plays in their involvement in informality and the implications that that might have for the design of more inclusive policies.

Paper long abstract:

Cape Town, South Africa, has made significant strides in introducing inclusive policies for informal trading, suggesting that it can, in many ways, be used as a model for other cities in the Global South that seek more accommodating approaches to informal economic activity. If it is to provide a truly supportive environment for informal workers, however, significant progress still needs to be made. This presentation explores one dimension of this reality by focusing on the experiences of migrant entrepreneurs in the city’s informal food economy. Examining the results of a major survey of 450 migrant informal food economy entrepreneurs undertaken in 2021 and 2022, it highlights the forms of exclusion the migrant entrepreneurs face, exploring the extent to which these serve as a driver for informality. In doing so, it contributes to longstanding debates about the origins of informal economic activity by considering the interaction of institutions, policy design and personal motivation amongst a group that faces unique obstacles to participation in the formal economy. It uses these insights to consider what more inclusive policy approaches might look like, emphasizing that these must address the barriers that informal workers, regardless of their migration status, identify as important. It is only when this is done that Cape Town can fulfill the promise of economic inclusion for some of its most vulnerable residents, and thus serve as an example of inclusive policy approaches to informal economic activity that others can emulate.

Paper short abstract:

This paper questions the extent to which data can drive policy when the digital, data-led initiatives - although intended to improve targeting of affected groups and achieve efficiency in social-service-delivery - are guided by a homogenized understanding of circuital migration, as flows of labour.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic unveiled the otherwise invisibilized, informal/unorganized sector workers in India, largely internal, circuital-migrants, who fell through the gaps of social-security. In response, a number of state-led initiatives were launched by leveraging on the platform-state - i.e., the state that enlists citizens on databases with a view to improving surveillance but also targets to provide protection and relief in times of crisis. This paper questions the extent to which data can drive policy when the digital, data-led initiatives - although intended to improve targeting of affected groups and achieve efficiency in service delivery - are guided by a homogenized understanding of migration, as flows of labour. Findings from Jharkhand, India, reveal that a majority of migrant-laborers are absorbed in sectors of work that are characterized by occupational-hazards, precarious working- conditions, insecure contracts of work (if available) and insufficient wages. The persistence of such acute levels of exploitation, in consonance with historical trends of ethnic/caste-based subordination in labour-markets, have meant that migrant-labourers have tried to negotiate such conditions by spreading themselves cyclically across multiple economies at the source and destinations, depending on their socio-political contexts and biographical contingencies. Such negotiations have given rise to variegated patterns of migration including multiple durations, erratic frequencies, laterally crossing over between sectors, etc. It thus, becomes important to rethink the homogenized definitions and methods of data-collection before using them to produce generalized data to inform policy-making, so that lived-realities of migrants are not at odds with the initiatives for digitalisation of social-protection for migrant-labour.

Paper short abstract:

This paper unveils institutional challenges faced by Chinese migrant workers in China's unbalanced rural-urban social insurance system. It explores inequalities in domestic exploitation caused by insurance and a unique response from the workers that makes the policy more inclusive.

Paper long abstract:

Amidst China’s dynamic socio-economic landscape since the era of reform and opening up, the profound rural-urban disparity and its reverberations on labor migration have ascended to a position of paramount importance. Nongmingong, the Chinese migrant workers, confronts challenges propelled by social insurance discrepancies, rural-urban divides, and the household registration (Hukou) system. Employing a multifaceted approach encompassing historical retrospection, logistic analysis, and case studies, this study brings to light the nongmingong phenomenon. At its heart lies the evolution of China’s social insurance policies, steering the trajectories of nongmingong’s migration. Distinct contours of medical and pension insurance materialize, wherein medical insurance designed for rural residents curtails nongmingong’s mobility, while pension insurance effects exhibit nuanced gradients. Furthermore, this dissertation examines the government’s response in the face of nongmingong’s exit from cities, epitomized by the approach of Guangdong province. The study’s interpretive prism extends to encompass the nongmingong phenomenon through the lenses of the developmental state paradigm. The artificial dissonance in social insurance coverage surfaces as a form of inequality, with governmental reactions constituting a remedial response as nongmingong steps back from the urban labor stage.

Paper short abstract:

Immobility studies within migration research are becoming popular. Yet such studies focus more on the drivers and less on the outcomes, not giving a holistic picture of (im)mobility. This paper analyzes the regional policy discourse on climate-induced (im)mobility in selected regions of Uttarakhand.

Paper long abstract:

The Himalayas are one of the youngest mountains in the world, with a delicate natural ecosystem. These mountains frequently make headlines due to the occurrence of disasters like landslides, ground subsidence, and cloud bursts. Among the many impacts of climate change is human (im)mobility. Disaster-affected populations either choose to move or stay back voluntarily or involuntarily. Uttarakhand in India has a history of out-migrations primarily due to socio-economic reasons, but climate migrants are emerging as a new category. The majority of the migratory events documented are from the state’s mountainous areas to its plain districts or to the cities in the neighbouring provinces. Every year, Uttarakhand reports anthropogenic disasters, which are further getting exacerbated by the ongoing state-led infrastructural development. First, we review and evaluate the significance of immobility in migration studies at the global and national levels, as mobility and immobility are co-dependent phenomena. Thereon, we conduct a critical policy analysis of the migration policies of Uttarakhand to understand the representation of immobile populations. Despite the historical out-migrations, the mobility bias within migration research is evident in migration policies, which mostly disregard the needs of immobile populations. We argue that incorporating the concerns of both mobile and immobile populations in the migration policy of the state could create long-term sustainable solutions and opportunities for the vulnerable local populations.

Paper short abstract:

Based on study done on 1000 youth migrants in India, the paper proposes an alternative lens to understand youth migration and suggests source-site interventions to include these migrants in the social security framework.

Paper long abstract:

India has close to 37% of population as internal migrants, constituting more than 10% of the labour force. While on one hand it is clear from various studies that these migrants, particularly moving from the rural to urban destinations lack any democratic rights to the city and are often invisibilised in the policy making process, on the other hand attempts of many civil society organisations of collectivising migrants to give them a voice have also not been very successful. The paper tries to interrogate this contradiction.

In our study of youth migrants (16-26 years) we find that the younger generation of migrants are making migration decisions in very different ways than their predecessors. The interesting thing about the youth migrants is that they are the second-generation migrants, who have earlier experienced migration as child migrants with their families. Hence rather than economic distress, their migration is driven by ‘materialistic aspirations’. Also, the imagination of source-destination migration corridors no longer holds. The youth migrants have been using the social media platforms to create and expand their migration networks, which enables them to change their destination at their will, thus making the destination sites very fluidic.

With this backdrop, the paper proposes an alternative lens to understand youth migration and suggests source-site interventions to include these migrants in the social security framework.