Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

The paper is based on an extensive field work done with migrant youth in the rural areas of Chhattisgarh, India, which explores how their access to digital means and social media have been re-shaping their aspirations and migration trajectories.

Paper long abstract

Situated in the broader literature of youth migration in the urban informal sector, this paper aims to bring out the interrelatedness between the ‘rural’ and the ‘urban’ India through mapping the worlds of rural youth, and highlighting the role of ‘digital connectedness’ in shaping the urban aspirations and migrations of the rural youth.

The paper is based on extensive field work done with migrant youth in the rural Chhattisgarh, India, involving a quantitative survey of 1048 youth migrants, followed by in-dept interviews with few selected youth migrants. The study explores how their access to digital means and social media have been re-shaping their aspirations and migration trajectories.

The paper narrates three case stories of youth migrants, which show that the migratory patterns of the youth, unlike their predecessor, does not follow a typical migration corridor or livelihood imagination. With their social media networks, they are able to find work and destinations which are unconventional. While this makes them more agentic in their migration process, it also imparts precarity and passivity in dealing with difficult situations at work. Given the ease of securing a job through social media, the youth, whenever confronted with harassment at the work site, ‘exits and moves to a new destination’. Such a transient engagement does not allow them to have any ‘voice’ over their rights at workplace. Thus the paper brings out the contradictions between a digitally empowered ‘agentic’ youth who is able to make choices for their livelihood, yet is ‘passive’ in securing their rights.