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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how short-term migrants access digital welfare in Delhi and Kochi. It identifies 'techno-mediators' who help navigate systems. Kochi enables formalised access; Delhi shows reliance on informal intermediaries and payments, creating differentiated mediated citizenship.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how informal short-term migrant workers access welfare programs within India's increasingly digital welfare infrastructures. It reveals the particular temporal and spatial connections migrants develop with destination cities, challenging assumptions that place transient migrants within a generalised 'urban poor' category. Digital welfare systems function as more than technical platforms, they are concrete spaces where inequalities and differential access emerge through daily interactions.

Drawing on post-pandemic ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and Kochi, this research documents how migrants engage with welfare systems and the physical efforts required to secure benefits. Digital reforms have generated varied forms of intermediated access for short-term migrants. While existing research focuses on broker-mediated welfare, this study identifies 'techno-mediators'—intermediaries who help migrants navigate digital platforms when they lack political connections.

The comparative case studies show that while Kochi’s more formalised welfare infrastructures allow for state-mediated welfare access, Delhi’s fragmented landscape compels migrants to rely on informal intermediaries and payments. By disaggregating the ‘urban poor’ and foregrounding the role of digitalisation in reshaping welfare mediation, this paper contributes to the literature on claim-making and migration. It highlights how claims of streamlined, inclusive systems mask the ongoing work, persistence, and barriers defining transient migrants' realities, calling for governance approaches attuned to their particular precarity.