research paper on migration in india

• Original Article
• Open access
• Published: 03 November 2021

Challenges of reverse migration in India: a comparative study of internal and international migrant workers in the post-COVID economy

• Asma Khan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6008-8006 1 &
• H. Arokkiaraj 2  

Comparative Migration Studies volume  9 , Article number:  49 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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In India, the major drivers of both internal and international migration are the prevailing unemployment, competitive labour market and enhanced livelihood prospects in the destination state or country. However, the nationwide lockdown and the sealing of inter-state and international borders to control the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the reverse migration of informal migrant workers. This requires the central and state governments to collectively forge strategies to enable their reverse migration and smooth reintegration in the post-COVID economy. In this paper, we have focused on the inter-state migrants in India and returnee migrants only from Gulf countries as they account for two-thirds of Indian migrants living abroad. This study conducted a comparative analysis of the Indian government’s varied approach towards its internal and international migrants during their reverse migration, repatriation and reintegration after the announcement of the lockdown. Firstly, the paper compares the challenges faced by internal and international migrant workers during these stages with the help of in-depth interview data collected from migrants and social workers. Secondly, the varied governmental responses towards their repatriation are discussed. Thirdly, it analyses the obstacles in their economic reintegration to help frame suitable welfare policies for the Indian migrant community.

Introduction

India has a predominant share of internal migration and is also the top origin country of international migrants (De, 2019 ; UNDESA, 2020 ). The Indian Census (2011) data calculated the total number of internal migrants accounting for inter and intra-state movement to be 450 million, an increase of 45% since the Census 2001 (De, 2019 ). The Economic Survey of India 2017 estimated the inter-state migrant population as 60 million and the average annual flow of migrants between states was calculated at 9 million between 2011 and 2016 (Sharma, 2017 ). Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Rajasthan are among the major origin states, while Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu are among the important destination states for these migrant workers (Kamal, 2018 ).

India has the largest diaspora (18 million) with the number of migrant workers in Gulf countries alone accounting for 8.4 million (Ministry of External Affairs, 2021 ; UNDESA, 2020 ). Among the Gulf countries, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are the top most favoured destination countries for the Emigration Check Required (ECR) categories from India. Footnote 1 India is also amongst the largest recipient of remittances at USD 78.6 billion (International Organisation for Migration, 2020 ). In recent years, the low-skilled labour outflows to Gulf countries from relatively poorer states such as UP, Bihar and West Bengal has increased substantially while those from more prosperous states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka have reduced (Sasikumar & Thimothy, 2015 ). Poor wage rates in less prosperous states, persistent wage inequalities between regular and casual workers and lack of formal employment opportunities leads to low-skilled and semi-skilled workers migrate overseas to enhance their economic well-being (Karan & Selvaraj, 2008 ; Sasikumar & Thimothy, 2015 ). Owing to the infrastructural development and growing demand in important sectors of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the reliance on low-skilled or semi-skilled workforce (which constitutes around 85% of the total workforce predominantly engaged in construction and service sector) from India and other Asian and African countries will remain high (GIZ and ILO, 2015 ).

Migration thus gives an optimistic livelihood strategy for migrant workers and their families, contributes to the economic growth of the destination state/country, while the origin state/country benefits from the remittances and the skills acquired during their migration. Migrants from Kerala, a southern state in India, earn high wages as high-skilled workers in the Gulf, allowing them to remit more (Rajan & Zachariah, 2020 ). Even though labour migration compensates for labour shortages in the destination states/countries, workers employed in the low-skilled, labour-intensive sectors suffer malpractices such as wage-related abuse, working overtime without compensation, lack of social security cover and lack of protection during recruitment and employment (Srivastava, 2013 ; International Organisation for Migration, 2020 ). This points to the vulnerable position of these migrant workers which was heightened further during the COVID-19 crisis.

On 24th March 2020, in order to contain the virus, a strict nationwide lockdown was imposed by India with immediate sealing of the inter-state and international borders within four hours of its announcement. This shocked the unprepared migrant workers, both internal and those working abroad. Similarly, with the spread of COVID-19, the Gulf economy was also halted which led to migrant workers being stranded without food, livelihood, safe place to stay and being desperate to return to India. The lack of governmental planning to ensure the well-being of migrant workers within India and abroad led to a “crisis within a crisis”. In this context, this study conducts a comparative analysis of the challenges of reverse migration of India’s internal and international migrant workers. Three major research questions have been covered a) what are the economic and social challenges during their reverse migration, b) what are the varied governmental responses towards the repatriation of both the categories of migrant workers and c) what is the process of economic integration for the reverse migrants. This paper is divided into five parts. First, the introductory part which provides a basic overview of internal migration within India and international migration from India. The second part explains the research methodology and the third consists of the primary findings presented in a comparative manner in accordance with the research questions. The fourth part consists of the analysis which examines the common themes emerging from the experiences of the internal and international migrants from India. The fifth part provides a brief conclusion for this study.

Research methodology

In order to study the three research questions mentioned above, telephonic interviews with 65 reverse migrants were conducted during May–August 2020 in India. Table  1  presents the profile of the reverse migrants interviewed for this study. Internal migrants belonging to Indian states such as Bihar, UP, MP, Odisha and Chhattisgarh who had returned from the destination states such as Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Maharashtra were interviewed. Only reverse international migrants from Gulf countries were contacted as a majority of Indian workers are employed in this region. All the workers covered under this study belong to the low-skilled and semi-skilled workers category. A list of contacts of these migrants was prepared with the help of social workers and other researchers working with them. Telephonic interviews, which proved to be the most appropriate method due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, with all the migrants have been written as notes and analysed. The snowball sampling method was adopted at a stage where communication was established with some migrants who connected us to other returnees. Further, interviews with labour migration experts and social workers in Delhi and UP, who have worked closely with the migrants, during the lockdown were conducted and guidance from labour migration experts was sought. Interviews were semi-structured and involved key themes covered in the research questions. The interviews were carried out in Tamil and Hindi, which were the preferred languages of the migrants. In order to protect their identities, pseudonyms have been used to refer to the migrants.

Further, this research did not attempt to offer representative samples, rather it aimed to provide narratives of the experiences and challenges faced by the migrants during their reverse migration, repatriation and reintegration. The method of narrative analysis was employed to provide a qualitative understanding of the subjective perceptions and experiences of the reverse migrants during the pandemic which may not be adequately captured by statistics. A comparative analysis of the interviews of the internal and international migrants was done to identify the differences and the common challenges faced by the Indian migrant community during a crisis which needs urgent attention during policy making and implementation.

Some of the operational definitions used in this study are as follows. ‘Internal migrants’ refers to inter-state migrant workers who were stranded in different destination states within India. ‘International migrants’ refers to Indians who had migrated to one of the Gulf countries in search of work. The term ‘origin’ and ‘destination’ refers to one’s native place and place of work, respectively. The term ‘reverse migration’ refers to the process of internal and international migrants returning to their place of origin from the destination state/countries. The term ‘economic reintegration’ refers to finding stable employment at one’s origin state. Low-skilled workers includes migrants who are commonly understood as ‘unskilled workers’.

Findings of the study

This section consists of the primary findings arranged thematically to highlight the various challenges faced during the reverse migration, repatriation and reintegration of both the categories of migrant workers. Under each subheading, first the narratives of the internal migrants are presented followed by those of international migrants. In the next section, a comparative analysis of the findings is done and some common problem areas emerging from the findings have been delineated.

Economic challenges during reverse migration

Due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown, the working class, especially the low-income migrant workers, have been the worst affected (Pandey, 2020 ). They were retrenched in large numbers, were rendered unemployed with their wages unpaid in the destination states which forced them to return to their origin states. Lokesh, one of our respondents and a construction worker who returned from Karnataka to Odisha, the lack of employment and wage theft pushed him to return to his native state during the lockdown. Similarly, Mahesh who was working in a hotel when the lockdown was imposed stated:

“I was in Delhi for the past 15 years… During the lockdown I was provided with full salary for March and very less salary for April. The salary for the month of May was unpaid. I cannot survive in Delhi on my savings without any job. So finally, I came back in the month of June to Bihar.”

A few internal migrants reported that they received work under the same employer/contractor after the lockdown but complained of non-payment of wages during the lockdown period. They were forced to return to their villages due to unpaid wages, no place to live with basic facilities such as electricity and water provided by the contractor/employer and no immediate governmental protection. While recalling the plight of these migrant workers, a social worker in Delhi explained how the migrants faced wage theft and retrenchment by their employers when the lockdown commenced, however, when the restrictions eased and industrial work resumed, they were ready to pay the workers. Such instances reveal how the migrant workers were treated as a means to an end and not as citizens whose welfare matters. However, there were a few internal migrants who had stayed back in Delhi, which was their destination state, even during the lockdown period. The reason they reported for not returning was lack of work in their village and that they still hold their jobs in Delhi. They also stated how their employers had arranged for a place to live on the construction premises, took care of the basic facilities like food, electricity and water supply and that they resumed work once the restrictions were lifted.

Similar despicable conditions were experienced by the Indian migrant workers in Gulf countries. There was an urgency to return to India among them caused by large-scale retrenchments due to the unplanned lockdown (Kumar & Akhil, 2021 ). Hassan, a driver by profession and the only earning member of his household, was one of the many workers retrenched by the private companies in UAE. He was forced to survive on his savings after returning to his native state Tamil Nadu. Wage theft was commonly reported by both internal and international migrants. Bala, a returnee from Oman to Tamil Nadu, reported how his employer did not pay him his due wages, retrenched him and did not even offer to cover the flight expenses to India. Arun, a construction worker, who returned from Kuwait to Tamil Nadu stated his plight:

“Along with me, three were working as helpers in a construction site. Since the lockdown the work was halted, and we were not getting paid. For a few days, the employer gave us food…Then he asked us to return to India as he has no money to take care of us. When we asked for our salary, he threatened us that he would file a false complaint to the police against us if we ask for money…”

However, a few international migrants reported that their employers paid their due wages, arranged for their return, got their Covid tests done and therefore did not face any problem as far as their return to their village was concerned. None of the respondents of this study were a part of trade unions.

Social challenges during reverse migration

This segment consists of the social challenges faced by migrants before and after the governmental repatriation. The migrants interviewed reported instances of discrimination against them and being viewed as the spreaders of the virus in the destination city/state, during their journey back home, in quarantine facilities and in their villages. Maitheli, who is a wife of a migrant construction worker, experienced stigmatization when returning from Maharashtra to her village in MP a week before the lockdown. She narrated:

“We started our journey before the lockdown in a bus as we had to attend a wedding in March… However due to the news of the spread of Covid, even then people were avoiding interactions with us… some people even placed a cloth to cover their mouth and nose while passing by…”

Rahul returning from Delhi to the state of Bihar reported his experience of caste-based discrimination at the quarantine centre. He explained how people belonging to the higher castes resided on the ground floor with all the facilities while those belonging to the lower castes were kept on the second floor without facilities. Another international migrant reported lack of basic facilities at the quarantine facility in UP and that his family had to provide him with food. This points to the gross neglect of the migrants and puts the entire rationale of quarantine and social distancing into question.

Amanatullah, an international migrant returning from Kuwait to UP reported how even after completing the quarantine period in both the origin and destination states with proper Covid testing done, the villagers, though temporarily, maintained their distance for a few weeks. The interviews revealed that the nature of discrimination in the villages ranged from physical distancing to isolation and hostility which included threats of cutting off supplies of basic necessities to the migrant workers and their families on the basis of mere suspicion of being infected with COVID-19. Dilip, a construction worker returning from UAE to his village in MP, also reported similar discrimination. However, when inquired about his sentiments regarding this, he also blamed the migrant workers for inviting such discrimination:

“Yes some villagers discriminated against us… It felt bad… but even the migrants are at fault as they hide their symptoms, escape the Covid tests and don’t follow the rules so somewhere or the other the villagers rightly set their distance with them since the nature of virus is dangerous...”

At the destination countries, the Indian migrant workers in Kuwait were stripped of their accommodation and were forced to resort to cramped shelters and unhygienic living spaces. Raju, described the despicable situation of Indian workers in Kuwait, where he had been staying under a shed in a nearby car parking space for the 2 weeks along with 150 more workers. Hailing mostly from Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal, these migrant workers were getting limited support from a voluntary organization of one meal per day.

Since the international migrants had to incur their own travel fare during their repatriation, the interviewed returnees had inculcated a feeling of discrimination when compared to other Indian citizens who could afford the expenses to return to India. Most of them had limited financial resources which were insufficient to bear the cost of accommodation, food and return tickets. This category of migrants have low literacy level and have little to no bargaining power with their employers who retrenched them abruptly and alienated them in a foreign country.

Migrant workers’ mobility challenges

Initially, the central government was reluctant to rescue the stranded migrants both within and abroad, despite appeals from different stakeholders such as state governments, civil society and trade unions (Desai, 2020 ; Haider, 2020 ). Despite the strict mobility restrictions imposed by the government, the distressed internal migrants kept moving on foot or in unsanitary lorries or trucks towards their origin states due to their inability to sustain in the expensive urban areas (Rather & Yousuf, 2020 ). They faced numerous problems while attempting to cross state borders such as police brutality, grievous injuries with reports of even death due to exhaustion and dehydration (FPJ Bureau, 2020 ). There was a lack of coordination among the central and state governments resulting in contradictory stances while handling the mass migration (Rather & Yousuf, 2020 ). At the same time, the employers retrenched the migrant labourers as their businesses were shut due to the lockdown. This resulted in thousands being stranded on various inter-state borders such as Karnataka-Maharashtra and Delhi-Uttar Pradesh (Abi-Habib & Yasir, 2020 ). Rannvijay , a construction worker who returned from Delhi to Bihar, was rendered jobless and due to lack of proper transportation arrangements by the government, he had to travel back independently in a truck to his village. One of the social workers we interviewed described the desperate circumstances that the low-skilled workers had to face in Delhi due to the imposition of the sudden lockdown. He explained:

“Most of the workers stranded on the streets were from low-income groups and belonged to industries such as construction, restaurant, etc. Many workers were stranded on the streets with their families and were rendered jobless. Nobody was there to help them.”

There was an increased pressure from all the stakeholders as several petitions were filed in High Courts and the Supreme Court of India to rescue stranded migrants in various states/countries (Desai, 2020 ; NH Political Bureau, 2020 ). After one and a half month of the lockdown, the central government started Shramik (workers) special trains and local buses on the request of the state governments. From May 2020 onwards, 4621 Shramik special trains were operated for rescuing both stranded persons and migrants which transported 63.19 lakh (around 6 million) passengers to their origin states (Ministry of Railways, 2020 ). The Indian Railways allowed only those passengers to travel who were facilitated by the destination state governments. Given the lack of availability of latest data on internal migrants, the Indian government also launched the National Migrant Information System where details of the migrants commuting via the Shramik trains could be maintained for seamless communication between state governments and contact tracing if needed (Karthikeyan, 2020 ). There was widespread criticism against the central government for making the poor and distressed migrants pay for their ticket despite amassing huge amounts in the PM-CARES Fund established to provide emergency relief during the COVID-19 crisis. Following much confusion and a political tussle between the central and state governments regarding the sharing of travel expenses even when the special trains were running, the state governments later offered to cover their fare (Dhingra, 2020 ).

Interviews with migrants revealed the difficulties they faced while boarding the special train. Deepak, returning from Delhi to UP, reported that the passengers were not provided with food and water while other respondents reported that they were provided with one meal on a long journey. The train Deepak boarded left him at a place which was 84 kms away from his home. This experience was shared by a few other respondents where they had to cover the remaining distance on their own. Another complexity was related to the online ticket booking process since most of the migrants lacked access to and knowledge about digital technology. The information regarding the Shramik trains was advertised on digital media and the ticket could be booked only in online mode. One of the respondents highlighted how some migrants were unable to return due to their lack of awareness and inability to book the ticket online. Here it is important to emphasise the role played by NGOs and trade unions in the repatriation of migrants either by bus or special train. Yogesh, who returned from Karnataka to Chhattisgarh, described how the migrants who booked the tickets through exploitative agents paid an exorbitant fee:

“Some received help from their family members and friends. But a majority of the workers went back with the help of NGOs, trade unions and their employers. Those who went back with the help of travel agencies and dealers had to pay around 1500-2000 rupees in order to reach home.”

A number of senior academicians and civil society members had pointed towards the ineffective governmental efforts in spreading awareness about the contact details of the designated officials to help with the free online ticket booking and caution them against the exploitative third parties (Counterview, 2020 ). This resulted in a number of migrants being unable to return on their own or returning late or still walking on foot towards their origin state even when the trains were operating in comparison to those migrants who had the necessary resources and support.

Following appeals from various stakeholders and Indians stuck abroad, especially from the Gulf countries, the central government initiated the Vande Bharat Mission (VBM) on 7th May, 2020. As per the data provided by the MEA, until 11th September, 2020, over 1,385,670 Indian nationals stranded abroad had been repatriated under the VBM (MEA, 2020 ). MEA provided a list of country-wise and category-wise registration list of stranded Indians in foreign countries (MEA, 2020a ). As per this list, Indian workers stranded in the Gulf were the highest amongst other categories requesting for their repatriation . As per the latest statistics available on 10th March, 2021, 3.25 million workers had been repatriated from the Gulf (MEA, 2021 ). The Kuwait government helped in repatriating the undocumented migrants back to India by paying for their amnesty flights and allowing these migrants to re-apply for their visa at a later date (Dutta, 2021 ).

In order to board a special flight, returnees from Gulf countries under VBM had to afford their own high-cost flight tickets as per the central government guidelines. Kumar, who worked as a driver in Kuwait, discussed his experience of availing the VBM flight during a telephonic conversation with the Indian Embassy in Kuwait as follows:

“First they asked for details like my name, where I worked, whether I am willing to go back home, they asked about the nature of my problem and after gathering the remaining details, they asked me whether I have the money to purchase the flight tickets. If I say ‘yes’ only then they were proceeding the call, if ‘no’ then they (may) disconnect the call. If I say ‘yes’ then they will ask me to undergo a COVID-19 test and fourteen days quarantine. If we agreed, only then they will inform us about the procedure to book the tickets and our name will be noted. Based on this, we can either go home or not.”

The above narration reveals the plight and vulnerability of the stranded Indian workers awaiting repatriation. Further, the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare had prescribed 14 days of mandatory quarantine for all international arrivals with the first 7 days to be spent in institutional quarantine (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2020 ). All the respondents of this study reported undergoing the COVID-19 tests and either institutional or home quarantine. It should be noted that for internal migrants, quarantine facilities and COVID-19 testing were state-sponsored. However, for international migrants, the expenses for institutional quarantine and COVID-19 testing had to be incurred by the passengers themselves (Srivastava, 2020 ). They could avail exemption from institutional quarantine but only by submitting a negative RT-PCR test result, which was also an expensive test. Thus, the international reverse migrants had to bear a major financial burden during the governmental repatriation and only those who could afford the high travel expenses could easily avail the VBM flights.

Process of economic reintegration of reverse migrants

Before discussing the experiences of the respondents with regard to their economic reintegration, we will mention the short-term and long-term measures taken by the central government to reintegrate the migrant workers in the post-COVID-19 economy. The central government announced a Rs 1.70 lakh crore (US$ 22.8 billion) relief package for the vulnerable sections which included categories of people who are migrants (Ministry of Finance, 2020 ). The central government urged the state governments to mobilize the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Welfare Fund which would benefit around 35 million construction workers registered under the Act (Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2020 ). However, it should be noted that there are an estimated 56 million workers in the construction sector (Nag and Afonso, 2021 ) .

Additionally, several state governments such as UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan announced one-time immediate cash benefits of Rs 1000 to 5000 (USD 13.59–67.12) and free rations through the Public Distribution System (PDS) (Anand and Thampi, 2020 ). Subsequently, after immense media attention, another relief package was announced of Rs. 20 lakh crores (USD 270 billion approx.) to benefit the migrant workers, self-employed and small traders. (Ministry of Finance, 2020a ). The scheme ‘ One nation one ration card’ was announced to be implemented across India in 2021 to enable migrants to access ration from any fair price shop in India using a digital card. Between April 1 and May 20, 2020, there was a sudden increase in the registrations (around 3.5 million workers) for MGNREGA, a rural employment scheme promising 100 days of work, pointing to increased need for employment (Chauhan, 2020 ).

It should be noted that such short-term relief packages by the central government were absent in the case of international migrants. Kerala was the only state in India which provided a one-time cash benefit of Rs. 5000 to them (Mathrubhumi, 2020 ) Also, the Kerala government aimed to help around 5000 Non-Resident Keralites under the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NORKA) Department Project for Returned Emigrants (NDPREM) scheme by offering Rs. 50 lakhs (USD 67,123) to each expat to facilitate their own business ventures (ET Bureau, 2020 ). Acknowledging the huge amount of remittances from the international migrants which benefitted the economy, Kerala also launched an exclusive integration programme called the ‘Dream Kerala Project’. It provides a platform for the business sector to tap the expertise of skilled human resources returning to Kerala after losing jobs abroad (Press Trust of India, 2020 ). The role of Kerala government in caring for its migrant community from organising community kitchens for stranded migrants to introducing long-term reintegrative measures has been praiseworthy.

As a long-term measure for the labour market integration of both internal and international reverse migrants, the central government announced a Rs 50,000 crore (USD 6.9 billion) ‘Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyan’ which involved skill mapping of migrant workers and connecting women with self-help groups for enhancing employment opportunities. (Ministry of Rural Development, 2020 ). In view of the lack of data on internal migrants, the government also announced to conduct an All India Survey on Migrant Workers and develop a National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW), which would include details of the migrants such as name, occupation, address, educational qualifications and skill type, etc. in order to secure employability and social security benefits for the inter-state migrant workers (Ministry of Labour and Employment, 2021 ).

SWADES (Skilled Workers Arrival Database for Employment Support), a joint initiative of the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the MEA, aimed to create a database of migrant workers based on their skill set and experience to fulfil the demands of Indian and foreign companies (Ministry of Civil Aviation, 2020 ). For facilitating employment opportunities, details of SWADES registrations were integrated with Skill India’s ASEEM (Aatmanirbhar Skilled Employee Employer Mapping) portal. As per the latest data, i.e. January 25th, 2021, more than 30,500 workers have registered for the SWADES Skill Card, out of which more than 24,500 are returnees from GCC countries (Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, 2021 ). Further, all data regarding Indians returning under VBM was shared with the state governments.

The internal migrants interviewed reported a sparse coverage of the government relief package as only a few respondents received immediate cash benefits. Only half of the respondents from UP and Bihar received a one-time cash benefit while the remaining did not. Sudesh, a construction worker, reported that he received free ration which would sustain his family only for 15–20 days of a month. A survey of 11,000 migrant workers conducted in April 2020, by SWAN (Stranded Workers Action Network) reported that none of the workers had received ration by the government during the lockdown period (Pandey, 2020 ). Our study (conducted between May – August, 2020) revealed that half of the respondents were able to avail rations at their native states even though its quantity and duration varied from within and across states included in our study. Those who did not receive free ration reported that they did not have a ration card, or their name was not included in the family’s ration card or were not present to provide a thumb impression to the biometric machine as they migrated to other states hinting at the non-portability of benefits. The data of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs indicated that the free ration scheme had failed because almost 11 states distributed less than 1% of food grains allocated to them (Sharma, 2020 ). Also, an RTI revealed that barely 10% of the Rs. 20 lakh crore stimulus package was distributed (The Tribune, 2020 ). Almost all the respondents reported not receiving work under MGNREGA. Ram, a construction worker and a registered MGNREGA worker, who returned to his native state Bihar in June stated that:

“It has been in news that people who have migrated to Bihar shall be provided with employment. But I did not get work under MGNREGA ever since I returned to my village.”

As a result, they were unable to find secure employment in their villages and were willing to remigrate to the urban areas or work under the same contractor/ employer who were unsupportive towards them when the lockdown commenced (Kumar, 2020 ). Amongst the international migrants interviewed, almost all of them were willing to remigrate abroad once the restrictions eased both in India and at the destination countries. Prem, one of the international migrants from MP, spoke about his desperation to remigrate to cover debts:

“After returning from UAE, so far I did not find any good job opportunities at par with the salary which I was earning abroad. Also our family has some debts which I can only settle if I work abroad for a high salary as the salary is very low here.”

Palani worked as a driver in Saudi Arabia and returned to UP after he was retrenched. However, he was willing to remigrate to any foreign country owing to the low level of wages in India in order to take care of his family. Thus, the data suggests that most of them are eager to remigrate than to stay back in their native states due to low wages, inability to find suitable employment opportunities and governmental support for integration. The remaining migrants, both internal and international, were uncertain about their return due to job losses, closing of the businesses where they used to work at or were willing to begin a new venture in their native states.

Analysis of the findings

Forced migrant mobility due to lack of protection by employers and the government.

As observed, the worst affected sections of the COVID-19 crisis were the migrant workers, both internal and international, who were pushed to the periphery. Due to the sudden and unplanned lockdown, shutting down of workplaces, hotels, construction work and other sectors which engaged migrant workers, where they earned hand-to-mouth wages, rendered them workless, wageless and homeless. Wage theft is an old phenomena, however the COVID-19-induced migrant crisis magnified this issue (Foley & Piper, 2021 ). The irresponsibility displayed by the employers, rampant wage thefts and forceful retrenchments in large numbers of both internal and international migrant workers added to their misery (Kuttappan, 2020 ; Sarkar, 2020 ). Although the Indian government issued an advisory promising the internal migrants food and shelter, payment of due wages and punitive action against landlords who forcefully evict them but it was rendered ineffective in protecting them.

There are several reasons which add to the precarious circumstances of both the categories of migrant workers. Firstly, they are informal workers with no enforceable contracts between the worker and the contractor. They are not united or backed by trade unions, are less educated, lack knowledge of the job market and good social networks to rely upon in urban areas and foreign countries. This makes them dependent on their contractors and contributes to their lack of bargaining power in case of exploitation (Srivastava, 2013 ). Describing the work condition of internal migrants , the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017–18) revealed that for more than 70% of the workers in the non-agricultural sector with a regular salary, consisting of mostly migrants, lacked any written job contract and 50% were not enrolled for any social security benefits (Sengupta & Jha, 2020 ). Also there is unavailability of affordable housing or rental options for the migrants (Iyer, 2020 ). The exploitative relations between the migrant workers and the employers or sponsors in the kafala system, contract substitution and corruption by middlemen in the Gulf is well-known (Hussain, 2015 ). In cases of wage theft, most workers are unable to file complaints due to lack of awareness of their rights and costly judicial process. For the international migrants, it is even more complicated to file complaints against their foreign employers after their return to their origin country (Kumar & Akhil, 2021 ). Therefore, the lack of minimal social and economic protection afforded to migrant workers pushed them back to their village. It can be deduced from our findings that if workers received a safety cover such as a place to live with food, water, free electricity, payment of wages and job security, there is a possibility that they would have stayed back in their work destination. Or the proper arrangement of their return would have contributed to a relatively smoother process of their reverse migration and ensured control over the spread of the virus. However, the rampant unemployment even amongst the general population during the lockdown will further reduce the bargaining power of the migrant workers in the post-COVID economy.

Migrant experiences of stigmatization, hostility and discrimination

The ill-treatment of the respondents of this study, both internal and international migrants, in terms of being stranded without adequate facilities aggravated their feeling of being discriminated. At the destination state, they were treated as outsiders and a burden when calamity struck with neither the employer nor the government taking their responsibility. The primary findings showed how both the categories of workers were forcefully retrenched and reduced to unsanitary shelters which took away their ability to isolate and put their life at risk. Wage theft and abrupt termination of employment contracts added to the hopelessness of the migrants who incurred huge costs while migrating to Gulf countries in search of a better life (Kumar & Akhil, 2021 ) Lack of social networks and the hostility and isolation they experienced in the cities, which many migrants referred to as “foreign lands”, forced them to return to their villages (Kumar, 2020a ). However, they had to face the social stigma of spreading the virus from the afflicted urban areas by returning to their villages which were relatively protected from the virus at that stage. In the case of internal migrants, the unsanitary conditions under which they returned at a time when travelling was prohibited exacerbated the hostility against them in the form of police brutality and discrimination by villagers. There were instances of social tension among villagers fearing contagion who assaulted the government officials and migrants who were returning (Kumar, 2020 ; Manoj, 2020 ). Deplorable condition of health facilities in the rural areas, lack of awareness of the safety measures and proper transportation arrangements by the government also contributed to the fear of the spread of the virus resulting in stigmatisation of the returning migrants. Lack of awareness of government officials in dealing with the returnees was evident when the migrants were sprayed with disinfectants in UP (BBC, 2020 ). When the government initiated transportation, most of the trains were carrying migrants from COVID-19 hotspots which raised concerns about their isolation (Sheriff et al., 2020 ). The instances of non-cooperation by migrants needs to be viewed in a larger context of lack of awareness, hostility towards migrant mobility, lack of basic amenities in the destination states and quarantine facilities and a resulting sense of distrust. In order to avoid discrimination and stigma, migrants tend to hide their symptoms, avoid seeking immediate healthcare and observing healthy behaviour (WHO, 2020 ) . The governmental controls over migrant mobility in the name of containing the virus perpetuated discrimination against the migrants who were viewed as vectors of the virus (White, 2020 ).

High migration costs for international migrants

Though both the categories of Indian migrant workers faced problems while seeking help from the Indian government, there are some differences which can be pointed out. The international migrants had to incur huge expenses on their ticket, Covid tests and quarantine centres in contrast to the internal migrants whose fare was covered by the respective state governments, even though some internal migrants ended up paying due to exploitative agents, lack of awareness and confusion at the political level. This difference of treatment is due to inadequate media attention and, as a result, lack of governmental attention paid to the concerns of international migrants. It must be highlighted how Indians travelling to foreign countries have to pay an exorbitant recruitment fee especially when travelling through an agent (Migration News, 2008 ). Such high costs of migration especially amidst a crisis, has the potential to push the blue collar international migrants into major debt and make their reverse migration challenging.

Inadequate database and lack of inclusive legal and social security for migrants

There is lack of reliable data on internal migrants with the government, unlike international migrants, as the last time any official data was collected was as part of the National Sample Survey 2007–08 and the Census 2011 whose data was partially released in 2020. During the lockdown, the Indian government never collected data on the deaths of internal migrants during their reverse migration and their job losses (Paliath, 2021 ). The lack of data culminated in the lack of clear direction among the central and state governments on the handling of the migrant mobility and also resulted in their non-coverage of social security measures. The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 aimed to protect migrant workers during their recruitment and transportation against abuse and exploitation by unregistered contractors but it has been poorly implemented (Sen, 2020 ). Also, in 2020, it has been subsumed under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, where it is applicable on establishments that employ five or more employees which renders migrants working in micro units outside the ambit of the law. Exclusion, poor implementation, lack of awareness and difficult application process of the governmental schemes providing affordable housing, food and cooking oil subsidies under the public distribution system, affordable public healthcare system renders the low-income migrant communities insecure (International Labour Organisation, 2020 ).

Positive role of the civil society

The civil society played a major role in supporting the migrants at all stages of their reverse migration. NGOs in India and in the Gulf countries were at the forefront during the distribution of food and medicines to stranded migrants, directing them to shelter homes, organising bus services, booking tickets of governmental transportation and facilitating undocumented migrants (Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2020 ; Som, 2020 ). They even conducted migrant surveys and compiled useful reports highlighting the tremendous problems they face generally and during the lockdown. The immense outreach of NGOs with the migrant workers at the grassroot level calls for a concerted effort between the civil society and the government in policy making for migrants.

Ineffective reintegration measures

Since labour is in the concurrent list, it is important for the central government to set a standard for the other states to follow. In this context, the non-inclusion of international migrants in the relief package was blameworthy. Though international migrants bring in huge remittances benefitting the Indian economy but amidst a crisis, they were left on their own instruments to cover their basic needs, travel fare during repatriation and survival in their origin country. This aspect did not receive enough media attention in comparison to the internal migrants. However, this was not enough to ensure the smooth reintegration of internal migrants as well, as more than 90% of India’s workforce is in the unorganised sector, which includes the low-income migrant workers, who are not registered under welfare schemes, lack wage protection and bank accounts (Express News Service, 2015 ). This, along with the faulty distribution of the stimulus packages, deprived them of its benefits. Even for those who managed to receive the one-time financial assistance, the amount was extremely small to meet the basic needs for even a month. The continuing pandemic and repeated lockdowns makes the situation for migrants difficult as they are unable to find jobs in their village and face travel restrictions which hinders their job search in urban areas simultaneously. Though skill mapping and maintenance of database are steps in the right direction, it has to be followed up with proper implementation and, most importantly, job creation in the origin states and under rural employment guarantee schemes like MGNREGA. In fact, renowned economist Jean Dreze has touted the idea of a state-sponsored urban employment scheme which will integrate the urban poor (Vij, 2020 ). A universal social protection cover, not only for the internal migrants but also international migrants upon their return, is important without which any reintegrative measure will remain futile.

This study highlighted the various aspects where the experiences of the internal and international migrants differed as well as converged especially during the pandemic. Some obvious differences were on account of them being separate categories in terms of their work destinations and migration process. However, as far as the differences in terms of the disparate media attention, share in relief package and reintegrative measures, high costs of migration, maintenance of proper database, all these can be commonly attributable to governmental neglect of migrants. The convergences drawn in this study are therefore important to highlight the general vulnerability of the migrants, irrespective of their category, even though both the origin and destination states benefit from migration. Their experiences converged in terms of the lack of planning and protection for the migrant community which led to them being stranded, economic challenges such as wage theft, retrenchments, survival on meagre savings, lack of social security protection, lack of governmental and employer accountability, social discrimination and hostility, mobility issues both before and after repatriation, difficulty in access to justice, ineffective reintegrative measures and vulnerability especially of the low-skilled workers. These commonalities reveal a general precarity of the Indian Migrant community and glaring caveats in migration policy making and implementation. There is a need to work on these aspects to make both internal and international migration a smoother process where all the stakeholders benefit especially in a post-crisis situation.

This study highlighted the involuntary and forced nature of reverse migration due to the sudden lockdown, lack of preparedness and planning among the government, the irresponsible behaviour of the employers and social hostility against the migrants. Lack of migrant data and registration in welfare schemes excluded most of them from the relief package benefits. The COVID-19 crisis has magnified several pre-existing problems faced by the migrant communities which led them to suffer invariably at different stages of their reverse migration. This crisis, therefore, should be used as an opportunity to bring positive measures and requires strong political will to implement them. The effective reintegration of the internal and international migrants in the post-COVID economy is an important policy issue which would entail collecting latest data, job creation which matches their skill set, inclusion in welfare schemes, portability of social security benefits taking into consideration the mobile nature of migrant communities. The Indian Community Welfare Fund should be mobilized not only in times of crisis but also in reducing the migration costs for international migrants. For better policy making, government must integrate with the civil society which has good outreach with the migrant communities at the grassroot level.

Availability of data and materials

This research includes primary data collected through interviews of migrant workers and social workers which is available with the authors. This data is not publicly available to protect the privacy of the respondents and only their real occupation, origin and work destination state has been reported in the manuscript. Some of the other data used for supporting key arguments are as follows. These links also feature in the reference list:

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According to Emigration Act, 1983 “person whose educational qualification is below matric (10th class) are categorized as ECR passport holders”. They have to obtain an “Emigration clearance” from the concerned office of Protector of Emigrants (POE) before travelling to any of the 18 ECR countries which includes the GCC countries.

Abbreviations

Emigration Check Required

Gulf Cooperation Council

Madhya Pradesh

Ministry of External Affairs

United Arab Emirates

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Uttar Pradesh

Vande Bharat Mission

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Acknowledgements

We would sincerely like to appreciate the help of the migrant workers and the social workers interviewed in this study. We are extremely grateful to S Irudaya Rajan, Chairman at The International Institute of Migration and Development, for his valuable insights on various aspects of the migration crisis during COVID-19. We would also like to thank Dr. Arsala Nizami, who works on issues related to South Asian Migration, for her views on the role of the civil society in assisting the migrants during the crisis.

The APC charges were covered by IMISCOE – Erasmus U Rotterdam through a SpringerOpen Membership. They did not influence the findings of this research in any way.

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AK worked on the internal migration aspect and carried out a comparative analysis of the internal and international migration. AH worked on the international migration aspect and wrote the sections pertaining to the same. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Khan, A., Arokkiaraj, H. Challenges of reverse migration in India: a comparative study of internal and international migrant workers in the post-COVID economy. CMS 9 , 49 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-021-00260-2

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Published : 03 November 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-021-00260-2

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The COVID-19 Pandemic and Internal Labour Migration in India: A ‘Crisis of Mobility’

S. irudaya rajan.

1 Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, India

P. Sivakumar

2 Department of Development Studies, Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Chennai, India

Aditya Srinivasan

This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on migration. The rapid spread of the pandemic caught countries across the world off guard, resulting in widespread lockdowns that clamped down on mobility, commercial activities and social interactions. In India, the pandemic precipitated a severe ‘crisis of mobility’, with migrant labourers in many major cities seeking to return to their hometowns. Their desperate attempts to return home by any means available rendered the lockdown ineffective in several areas, prompting clashes with authorities, last-minute policy relief and, eventually, the arrangement of transport measures. This paper aims to shed light on the vulnerability of India’s internal migrants in terms of their mobility, gender and mental health. In addition, it critically analyses the limitations of public policy in addressing migrants and suggests recommendations for the way ahead.

Introduction

This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated nationwide lockdown on internal migrants. As of 12 September 2020, India had recorded 958,316 active cases, with 77,472 deaths (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 2020a ). The rapid spread of this highly contagious disease prompted the Government of India to implement a nationwide lockdown on the 24 March, with strict restrictions on mobility and transportation links summarily cut off overnight.

The commencement of the lockdown generated widespread panic among migrants across India’s major cities and states of destination, kicking off concerted attempts to return predominantly to rural hometowns in the states of origin. From the scale of the attempted exodus, it is evident that the government did not account for India’s enormous magnitude of internal migrants, with the four-hour notice preceding the first lockdown taking migrant workers by surprise. The shutdown of commercial activities effectively cut off the primary source of income for many of these labour migrants, leaving them with little or no resources to ride out a twenty-one-day lockdown period which was likely to be the first among a number of consecutive nationwide lockdowns.

This paper is divided into five sections. First, the paper gives an overview of the characteristics of internal migration in India in terms of numbers, streams and gender through documentation on existing data. This section lays the foundation of the paper by highlighting how the COVID-19 pandemic affected migrants through an analysis of various strands. Secondly, the paper examines the gendered aspects of COVID-19 on migrant workers, since most of the narratives, albeit limited, were male-centred. The third section gives an account of mental health issues of migrants, and the fourth section highlights the limitations of social security provisions that failed to address the multidimensional vulnerabilities faced by migrants. This section presents an overview of laws and policies related to migration, known vulnerabilities and mobility-related issues, and the larger ‘invisibility’ of the migrants as a key contributor to the unprecedented scale of the crisis during the lockdown. The fifth section examines the roadmap for inclusive migrant policies.

Section I: Internal Migration in India: Attributes and Patterns

According to the 2011 Census, there were 450 million internal migrants in India by the ‘Place of Last Residence’ metric, thus accounting 37.7 per cent of the total population (Registrar General of India 2011 ). Based on census trends, we estimate about 600 million internal migrants in 2020. Among this, one-third are interstate and inter-district migrants which accounts to 200 million, and within this 200 million, two-thirds are estimated to be migrant workers that roughly constitute 140 million (Gupta 2020 ).

By all accounts, these numbers are enormous. If we have a closer analysis, we find that most internal migrants in India are short-distance intra-district migrants, with almost 62 per cent according to the 2011 Census. Long-distance interstate migrants accounted for 12 per cent of internal migrants, which, when compared to other developing countries like Brazil and China, is quite low. Research has pointed to a number of reasons; most importantly among them is the non-portability of social security benefits like subsidised food procured through the public distribution system and the constraints on jobs at the destination due to domicility restrictions (Kone et al. 2018 ).

Another point to be noted is that a significant number of migrant workers are temporary or seasonal migrants, with 21 out of every 1000 migrants classified as a temporary or seasonal migrants in 2007–08 (Keshri and Bhagat 2013 ). They show that the bulk of these migrants also hail from marginalised sections of the country and from among the lower-income quintile groups (Table  1 ). A number of these migrants are also involved in employment in the informal sector, making them some of the most vulnerable working groups, which further exclude them from social security benefits and even basic rights at the workplace (Srivastava and Sutradhar 2016 ; Government of India 2017b ).

Table 1

Temporary and seasonal migration rates by area and quintile levels, 2007–08

Source : Bhagat and Keshri ( 2013 )

As shown in Fig.  1 , women account for over half of the total migrants in the country. However, while male migration is primarily driven by reasons of work/employment, most female migration is for marriage or associated reasons (Rajan 2013 ; Rajan and Sumeetha 2019a ). However, studies have also pointed towards the increasing incidence of female migration or feminisation for employment on the rise (Neetha 2004 ; Rajan and Neetha 2018 ; Mahapatro 2020 ; Parida and Madheswaran 2020 ), which will be discussed in the next section.

Internal migration and gendered patterns in India.

Source : Mahapatro, 2020

The Economic Survey 2016–17 estimated an interstate migrant population of 60 million and an inter-district migrant population of 80 million (Government of India 2017a ). The average annual flow of migrants between states was calculated at 9 million persons. However, this number uses data from the Railways, which is a popular mode of transport for migrants, but far from the only one. Thus, new data and estimates are starting to emerge, but suffer from the same key drawbacks: a lack of recent and accurate data. The lack of consistent, wide-ranging data on migrants has made policy-framing and legislation far more difficult.

These features of internal migration and particularly their underestimation on part of the central and state governments came to light with the onset of the pandemic and specifically the policy response towards it.

Section II: The Missing Narrative of Gender

Narratives of the COVID-19 struggles of Indian migrant workers have either overlooked or trivialised the gender perspective. The experience and impact of COVID-19 on women migrant workers are different from their male counterparts, vis-à-vis the process of migration.

While women outnumber men in internal migration in India, it is often identified as part of marriage or associational migration (Srivastava 2011 ; Verick 2017 ; Rajan and Sivakumar 2018 ; Rajan and Sumeetha 2019b , b ; Rajan et al. 2020 ). This generalisation is one of the inherent reasons for the invisibility of female labour migrants. It is undoubtedly obvious that marriage and associated migration as part of the social practice of patrilocality and increased care work responsibilities are core reasons for the majority of women withdrawing from the labour force. However, women’s employment status after marriage migration is highly misunderstood and mis-measured, due to the fact that many women report marriage as the reason for migration, even though they immediately enter into jobs in the newly migrated area (Mehrotra and Parida 2017 ; Parida and Madheswaran 2020 ). In addition, the study conducted by Agnihotri et al. ( 2012 ) points that the movement of women is greatly oriented towards struggle with social, economic and political forces along with the policies that influence internal migration patterns and their outcomes for women.

Every disaster has an unequal gender impact. Within two months of the lockdown, four in every ten working women lost their jobs, which are more than 17 million (Rukmini 2020 ). The already happening reverse migration due to the overnight loss of livelihood of migrants can set the economy 15 years back (Nair 2020 ), alter the dynamics of development and reset migration equations for women. The soon-to-be anticipated unprecedented global economic depression will result in the feminisation of loss of jobs and widen gender gaps to an exacerbated level.

At this juncture, it is vital to visibilise three predominant categories of vulnerable women: those who belong to the lower strata of class, caste and geographical location. The first is the left-out women due to male migration. Male migration to urban areas, leaving their spouse, children and extended family behind, has been mainly due to lack of employment opportunities, agricultural crisis and small landholdings in rural areas and better opportunities in urban areas (Keshri and Bhagat 2013 ). This had structural as well as cultural constraints on the left-out women (Rai 2020 ). Increasing number of female-headed households in the rural areas has exponentially increased women’s responsibility inside and outside the house, often engaging in the traditional occupation or agricultural and allied activities the man left behind, in addition to the care work and household management. However, such women are neither part of welfare programs and schemes nor migration policies (Rai 2020 ).

Similarly, the narratives have failed to capture the issues faced by another major category of women: the single women migrant labourers. The mainstream traditions and norms devalue women working outside the domestic boundary and moving alone to stranger places (Ghatak 2020 ). The single women migrants, who bypassed these constraints and migrated alone from rural to urban areas for employment opportunities and economic benefits, are mostly silent in the narrative. This includes a large number of women ranging from live-in domestic help, women working in brick kilns or on construction sites and as farm labourers, to those who work in the service industry as beauticians, sales girls and waitresses (Sharma 2020 ; Sapra 2020 ). During the pandemic, many among them, pertaining to north-eastern states, were harassed and targeted for their looks. Their return to their native places was never covered in the media. Their workplaces, considered to be danger zones for COVID infection, are going to be locked down for a while, and therefore, most of them have chances of losing their jobs permanently. On the other hand, the home-based women migrant workers who chose to stay back in the place of employment are now working with a huge drop in daily wage (Thomas and Jayaram 2020 ) and missing out from COVID-19 relief schemes.

The only visible women migrants during COVID-19 times were those who migrated with their spouse (and children) for better job opportunities. Media has extensively reported an enormous number of men and women walking hundreds of kilometres back to their native land carrying children (Venkatraman et al. 2020 ; Pandey 2020 ). Some women died on the way, and a few women gave birth to children on the road and continued walking with the newborn (Singh 2020 ; Press Trust of India 2020 ). Many of them tested positive with COVID-19. The unfortunate incident of train running over and killing 16 migrant labourers who were sleeping in the railway tracks, tired of walking (BBC 2020 ), gives an account of their fateful travails. In addition, 80 passengers, including many women, died in Shramik trains (Awasthi 2020 ). The most affected are the children who will possibly lose education and be at threat of child labour.

Even though economically gainful, migration has always had higher vulnerability risks for women, especially with respect to exploitation and violation (Bhatt 2009 ). Now with reverse migration, the economic crunch and uncertainties will turn these women’s lives catastrophic. Even though COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, similar instances have evidently increased distress sale of assets and the incidence of domestic violence (Puskur et al. 2020 ). Loans, debts and accompanying poverty may result in alcoholism and depression in returned men, which will victimise women and girl children further. Sex trade, trafficking, exploitation, bonded labour and child labour may all be on the rise. Mental health impacts on women and children can be catastrophic if not addressed properly.

Women Migrants and Pertinent Challenges

The two confining aspects of policy initiatives aimed at women in India, if critically examined, are lack of intersectional approach of gender perspective and lack of inclusivity. While the diverse heterogeneity of Indian women is often overlooked within the applicability of gender needs, the coverage of many schemes remains exclusive of certain subsections of women. The quantitative approach alone cannot be sufficient to locate the deserving beneficiaries. Women migrants often fall outside the periphery of many of the women welfare schemes.

For example, schemes like Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) are well praised for their gender-sensitive approach and objectives. With Ujjwala Yojana—aiming to put an end to the use of firewood and biomass fuels for cooking that cause respiratory ailments and morbidity issues for rural women—LPG connections taken by women across India have increased by 16.26 per cent. However, recent studies show that due to the price rise of LPG, many women continue with the traditional method of cooking, after their first gas cylinder empties. Because of this, the use of gas cylinder has increased by only 9.83 per cent, which is lower than in 2014–15, before the scheme was introduced (Sethi and Deep 2018 ).

Similarly, JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) Trinity, the Online Subsidy Transfer of Jan-Dhan Yojana, aimed at financial inclusion, direct benefit and prevention of cut-outs and leakages through intermediaries (Krishnan 2015 ) and anticipated to benefit women most significantly. While the overwhelming number of accounts opened under PMJDY broke all records, it was identified that majority of these accounts went dormant, inactive and/or zero balance later on (Samant et al. 2017 ). Due to the lack of digital literacy, impediments in access and mobility factors, the government is supposed to think beyond Jan-Dhan Yojana for effective transfer of cash relief announced with respect to COVID-19 (Dreze and Khera 2020 ).

This is further validated by the findings of the rapid assessment conducted by ActionAid in 2020 on 177 returnee migrant workers in 15 districts of Bihar. The respondents reported that 89 per cent of the time, they could not avail any government schemes due to the lack of their Aadhaar being linked to bank accounts and other documents (Sapkal et al. 2020 ; see also Fig.  2 ). Also, they could not avail the entitlements due to migration out of the source district (83 per cent of the time) as well as due to a lack of proper information regarding the schemes (36 per cent of the time).

Reasons for not availing government schemes at the time of lockdown.

Source : Sapkal, Shandilya and Suresh 2020

These intent–impact gaps in welfare schemes due to the blind spots pertaining to the inherent heterogeneity of beneficiary requirements have been most critically unfavourable for migrant women. While feminisation of labour migration from rural to urban areas is predominant, it also means that these migrant women are prone to be excluded from utilising such schemes. At the same time, they lack access to urban welfare schemes as well (Thomas and Jayaram 2020 ). Another issue is that most of the migrant women workers at the bottom of the informal employment structure, working as part-time, contract, unregistered and home-based workers, do not have official status (Singh et al. 2020 ).

The government has recently announced Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana, a one-time scheme, converging 14 existing schemes of the government, aimed at providing employment to the returnee migrant workers near their villages (Deb 2020 ).This Rs. 5000 billion scheme will launch in 116 districts, within an execution frame of 125 days involves skill mapping of migrant labourers and linking women with self-help groups offering 25 types of employment. This can be a huge opportunity loss for such women migrant labourers who were identified simply as associational migrants and remaining excluded from the official data sources.

National Commission for Women: Advisory

On 31 March 2020, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, issued an advisory for the quarantine of migrant workers, where it was emphasised that ‘special care shall be taken with regard to vulnerable groups including children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with co-morbidities’ (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 2020b ). Recognising the multidimensional vulnerability of internal woman migrants and its perilous consequences, on 7 April 2020, National Commission for Women issued an advisory to the Ministry of Women and Child Development to take appropriate measures to address needs of internal women migrants during COVID-19 lockdown. This gender-responsive and inclusive advisory consisted of six identified needs (Table  2 ); recommendations for a gender-responsive and child-sensitive quarantine protocol with respect to children separated from mothers due to COVID-19 infection; possible actions and interventions from government authorities to ensure the safety of migrant women and girls; and specific advisory for protection of women migrants from north-east as well as pregnant and lactating women (National Commission for Women 2020 ).

Table 2

Advisory issued by the National Commission for Women to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2020

Source : National Commission for Women ( 2020 )

The transgender communities and their incidence of migration data are not specifically available, and their struggles are totally absent from the COVID-19 narratives. Many of them are migrants who left home due to denial of their identity and harassments. However, the advisory of National Commission for Women did not cover transwomen and queer communities who are more prone to the dangers of violence.

However, numerous reports cite that migrant women and children are not safe and secure in shelter homes, quarantine centres and COVID centres. Many cases of sexual assaults are reported where one migrant woman bled to death in a COVID isolation ward in Bihar due to sexual assault (Kumar 2020 ). Also, the rate of suicide among female migrant workers is on the rise (Kakar 2020 ). One woman found dead near a quarantine centre in Odisha (Mohanty 2020 ), being the nineteenth of such cases of migrant labourers reported in the state (Madaik 2020 ). Even though some quarantine centres were set up specifically for migrant pregnant women, the partum and post-partum health concerns of such women are still not addressed effectively.

Section III: Mental Health Crisis of Migrants

Mental health itself is a contested cultural taboo in the context of India. Studies found that mental health issues are significantly higher among single, unskilled, illiterate daily wage labourers with higher years of migration and lack of housing and proper sanitation facilities (Firdaus 2017 ). Therefore, the impact of COVID-19 and its related restrictions on the mental health of migrant workers can be varied and complex. Migrant workers are an already vulnerable population and COVID-19 aggravated several existing vulnerabilities such as fear of transmitting the disease, the absence of family and care groups (Choudhari 2020 ). Besides, the mishandling of migrant mobility and the scapegoating migrants faced during the pandemic (due to being the most visible movers of COVID-19) likely generated a huge trust deficit.

In a document released early into the pandemic, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare pointed out that migrants need to be treated with dignity and respect and, in more practical terms, need to remain well informed about all sources of assistance available to them from central as well as state governments in order to explore their options, including at quarantine centres (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 2020c ).

After the first lockdown, the Ministry of Home Affairs also urged the state governments to provide medical and psychological needs of the migrant workers along with food and shelter requirements (Tiwary 2020 ). Bihar State Health Society (BSHS) started ‘Ummeed’, a mental health programme for migrant labourers in health quarantine and isolation centres (Sopam 2020 ). Around 14,000 returnee migrants sought counselling to overcome depression, anxiety, apprehensions and sleeplessness due to the lockdown. Twenty-one states currently operate mental health counselling helplines and 21,000 migrant workers were given counselling in Karnataka alone (The Hindu 2020a ).

However, the widespread reports of police aggression, mistreatment at the hands of officials and delayed transport facilities run counter to these goals. This grievous apathy towards both the mental and physical health ramifications of COVID-19 could significantly change migration patterns once cities begin to open up once more. The unequal impact of the pandemic on the lives of internal migrant workers can augment the pre-existing mental health disparities among them. Therefore, Choudhari ( 2020 ) suggests that building a holistic intervention system including screening for psychological stress and integrating mental health professionals, factory medical officers, general medical practitioners, trained community health workers, etc. in addressing the mental health aspects of internal migrant labourers are essential.

For migrants who are fearful of their rights and lives, it is reasonable to assume that they will be wary about returning to cities to resume work once normality returns. If work availability recovers in India’s urban migration hotspots, migrants may not necessarily choose to move automatically (even if wages are higher) due to the comfort, convenience and familiarity of working in hometowns. Moreover, if local employment provisions (for example, under MGNREGA) are expanded, migrants will have less incentive to move to urban centres. There could be an additional benefit of economic activity and industry moving further into the hinterland, which could reduce migration distances and allow migrants and governments to react more quickly in times of crisis.

Section IV: Labour Migrants and Social Security Provisions

Over 90 per cent of India’s economy is supported by informal sector activities. There are varying degrees of informal economic activities, but the key feature of informal work is that organisations are removed from ‘formal’ oversight structures, and workers are left to fend for themselves. There may even be the extension of ‘informality in the formal sector’ (Dhanya 2013 ). This is evident from the point that the increasing employment opportunities even in the organised sector mainly accounted for informal workers (Mehrotra 2019 ).

Thus, two problems arise. first, the workers may be entirely outside the ambit of certain social benefits and key legislation. Second, the prevalence of informality in the formal sector results in shifting responsibilities and, ultimately, less oversight. Certain other acts, such as the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act and the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act (1996) also pertain to migrant workers, but limited in applicability due to various reasons. Moreover, India is yet to sign the flagship ILO Convention no. 102 [Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952], which guarantees social security coverage to all workers, including informal workers. The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008, covers social security measures limited to (a) life and disability cover, (b) health and maternity benefits and (c) old-age protection, and any other benefit as determined by the central government. It is to be noted that the draft bill proposed by NCEUS, which was later considered by the standing committee on labour, envisaged National Minimum Social Security Scheme for unorganised workers, inclusive of health and maternity benefits, life insurance and old-age security for BPL workers above 60 years. However, the act is silent on many other provisions in the draft bill.

Srivastava ( 2020 ) notes that with regard to the implementation of social protection programmes, some fundamental issues include:

• i. With regard to the state-level implementation of social protection programmes, the design, financing, coverage and delivery of programmes vary states to states and even between local bodies
• ii. These programmes are designed and targeted to a certain specific category of population primarily based on domicile; as a result, they exclude others who are domicile in another locality or state

The NCEUS proposal was having measures to address these limitations, but due to the fragmented and piecemeal implementation of the recommendations, the portability factors were ignored (NCEUS 2009 ; Srivastava 2020 ).

With regard to the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (BOCWWB), where a predominant section of migrants is engaged, it is estimated that around 56 million workers are in the construction sector, and out of this, only 32 million workers are registered. As of December 2015, an amount of Rs. 254.96 billion was collected as cess under the BOCWWB, out of which only 53.71 billion had been spent for the welfare of registered workers (Chandrasekhar et al. 2017 ). On 24 March 2020, the Union Labour Ministry had issued an advisory to all states/UTs to provide financial aid to construction workers out of the cess collected and the advisory mentioned that about 5200 billion is available as cess fund (Press Information Bureau  2020a ). As per the advisory, around 35 million workers are registered under the act as of 2020.

It is visible from the recent exodus of migrants out of distress that both the state and the central governments failed in enforcing the act. Had they implemented the act in its true spirit, it would have helped the government with accurate data from both origin and destination sources.

It is evident that the existence of legislation is not directly indicative of improved circumstances for migrant workers, especially in the informal sector. In fact, the informal sector, especially in large, diffused industries such as textiles, construction and manufacturing, thrives on passing through legislative loopholes and avoiding oversight. ‘Informality’, or the use of non-formal pathways to complete certain tasks even within formal employment networks, further complicates matters. While informal in-state workers are offered the protections available to state residents by virtue of their domicile status, those provisions are not available to migrants. This lacuna is exacerbated by hostile or discriminatory attitudes towards migrant workers.

Aside from the lack of legislation or the hidden exploitation of informal sector workers, migrants often face active discrimination in the form of domicile, cultural and ethnic discrimination, aggression from authorities and lack of access to basic needs such as shelter. In fact, it took until 2019 for the government to initiate the One Nation, One Ration Card scheme which would make ration cards portable across India and allow migrants to collect subsidised food grain at their destination. In effect, this meant that poor migrants suffered from compromised food security for decades. All of these factors cumulatively rendered migrants ‘invisible’ under most policy frameworks and, more importantly, made it inevitable that a sudden loss of mobility and income from precarious jobs could snowball into an unprecedented economic crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already crept deeper into the labour market causing widespread disruptions across the globe. It has affected both the supply chain and demand causing labour markets to shrink. The disruptions in production create ripples in the bottom of the chain affecting labour and result in deeper shocks and vulnerability. All business entities regardless of the volume of business were forced to stop and resulted in job losses in most of the sectors. This labour market shock has deeply impacted internal migrants.

Internal migrants are largely left out in social security coverage as majority of the rural–urban migrants are mainly in the casual wage sector or in self-employment in the informal sector (Srivastava 2011 ). There is visible lack of social security coordination between the various states in India, though sometimes there is visible source and destination and most of the instances the ‘invisible’ nature of migrants predominates in the labour market. This exclusion of informal workers from availing social protection mechanism further places migrant labourers in a vulnerable position. Unsurprisingly, the ILO estimates that India’s population is the most vulnerable in Asia and the Pacific region in terms of access to social protection (see Fig.  3 ). 1

SDG indicator 1.3.1: percentage of population in Asia and the Pacific covered by at least one social protection benefit (effective coverage), 2015 or latest available year.

Source : ILO, 2017 ; Annex IV 1

India has been largely successful in eradicating poverty by expanding social security nets targeting rural poor. It was possible by providing basic income via PM KISAN Yojana or access to food subsidies through PDS or health coverage through Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana and access to employment through MGNREGA. However, since there has been focussed attention towards the rural setting, there is a huge disparity in covering urban poor and migrants belonging to a large pool of such population.

The recent lockdown due to the pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability and lack of any social protection mechanism to migrants which resulted in chaotic scenes across urban India. Srivastava ( 2020 ) notes that the internal migrants in India face the following vulnerabilities:

• Lack of civic identity and civic citizenship in the destination areas
• Absorbed into labour market in less favourable ways than non-migrants
• Weaker social networks compared to non-migrants
• Extreme difficulties in establishing claims and entitlements

Social security has multiple dimensions from the human rights perspective to poverty alleviation (Townsend 2009 ). India’s social security system was primarily limited to the formal sector until recently. However, these were expanded to reach out to the informal workers as well and fairly successful in covering the informal segment of the population. Still, the coverage of social security is yet to reach out to the migrants as the institutional structure of social protection schemes is creating barriers in accessing the entitlement (Srivastava 2020 ; Sharma and Arora 2015 ). The above factors were visible during the lockdown period and their vulnerabilities were evident enough that the first and worst affected population during the pandemic are internal migrants.

The following are some of the important measures announced by the Government of India (Press Information Bureau 2020b ) to ameliorate the plight of migrants:

• Supply for food grains to the migrants who are not covered under the PDS system. This is expected to help 80 million migrant workers
• Affordable rental housing schemes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana
• Interest Subvention for 12 months for Shishu MUDRA loans—Relief of INR 150 billion
• Allocation of INR 500 billion for facilitating street vendors
• One Nation One Ration Card to enable access of PDS across the country
• The government had released INR 1100 billion to augment states in their State Disaster Response Fund for setting up shelter homes for migrants

Critics argue the there are several hits and misses in the announcement; for example, lack of proper data on internal migrants makes it impossible to design short-term or long-term welfare measures. Scholars like Dreze and Khera argue that over 100 million people will be excluded from the coverage of PDS due to the dependence on 2011 census for calculating state-wise coverage of National Food Security Act (NFSA) (The Hindu 2020b ). They argue that the biggest gap will be felt in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where approximately 28 million and 18 million people, respectively, will be left out in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from the ambit of National Food Security Act (Table  3 ).

Table 3

Estimated under coverage of population under NFSA (in million), 2020

Source : The Hindu ( 2020b )

Dreze ( 2020 ) further argues that the phenomenon of reverse migration due to the pandemic will affect different states differently. For example, the well-off states local workers may benefit from the reverse migration in the form of better employment opportunities due to the reverse migration. However, the poorest states will further suffer as the labour pool will set to bulge in a disproportionate way and this will affect the employment prospects.

For return migrants, social security provisions such as the MGNREGA scheme, which guarantees rural employment, are integral. The pressure on the government to create income generation opportunities for migrants at the source will be enormous. Between April 1 and May 20, 3.5 million workers registered for work under the scheme, indicating the sudden increase in dependence on vital social security schemes (Chauhan 2020 ).

From the above section, it is clear that there needs to be a comprehensive expansion of the Social Protection Floor for the internal migrants in India. As noted by Srivastava ( 2013 ), the creation of Social Protection Floor will have a huge impact in the lives of poor and vulnerable and also this will ensure the coverage of social protection in both horizontal and vertical extensions.

Section V: A Roadmap for Inclusive Migrant Policies

The adverse impact generated due to COVID-19 crisis is multidimensional and it is to be seen whether migrants will be able to come out of this vulnerable situation to restart/redirect their migratory journeys. The seasonal or circular migrants represent predominant internal migration in India and belong to lower socio-economic groups therefore adversely placed in the labour market (Srivastava et al. 2020 ). It is an undeniable fact that sound socio-economic policies can mitigate the ill effects of pandemic and the wrong ones magnify the problems. Based on lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and our own empirical observations, we propose the following measures to better managing the future of internal migration:

Studies show that employment provisions available in a locality even at low wages reduce seasonal distress migration. For example, analysing the original survey data from three states of India, Imbert and Papp ( 2018 ) prove that the availability of employment in local public works significantly influences out-migration despite the higher earnings available outside the villages. The employment provisions available locally for migrants need to be strengthened in order to reduce the gap between income at source and at the destination. Local income generation also comes with more assurances and proximity to safety in case of unprecedented circumstances such as COVID-19. This can be achieved either by expanding NREGA or by creating more by increased government spending into local public works.

Social Protection

PDS rations need to be supplied irrespective of migrant status during a national crisis. The One Nation, One Ration Card scheme, expected to be operational in 2021, will go a long way towards this. Along with this, it is important to strengthen the institutional mechanism for supporting migrants by cash transfers and extending food subsidies. The NCEUS-based working papers and reports can provide the foundation for the formation of a social protection framework in the future (Government of India 2017b ). Moreover, it is important to ensure that direct cash transfers are provided into the hands of migrant workers. With the loss of jobs, remittances to their respective households, a loss in purchasing power of these workers will result in a depressed demand even if normality is restored in the future. Cash in hands of workers ensures that workers have enough resources to sustain during any crisis and also ensure that some kind of consumption is restored in the future.

Special care needs to be taken in the case of women migrants. As we have shown, women’s issues have been largely invisibilised in both the narrative and policy responses by the state. This needs change which not only protects migrant women at the workplace nut also provide social support like creche facilities, adequate sanitation and healthcare facilities need to be ensured. Schemes to ensure better participation in the labour market through self-help and also access to finance and credit schemes also need to be further incentivised so that migrant women have a more robust support structure available to them.

Migration in post-lockdown scenario will create highly vulnerable situation as most of the urban PHCs are in accessible for migrants due to various reasons. Moreover, the accommodation and sanitation facilities available for migrants will make them further vulnerable. The mental health concerns of the migrants need to be considered, because they face enormous stress, anxiety and mental duress at the destination even under normal circumstances. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the vulnerability of migrants in times of crisis—migrant mobility must be facilitated to or from source on a priority basis. Restricting mobility at the outset only delays comprehensive resolution as was observed in source states that received return migrants after a few weeks and saw a spike in cases.

Comprehensively restructure the oversight and governance mechanisms for migrants in urban areas. The dichotomy of urban growth and migrant oppression must be addressed. A report by the Aajeevika Bureau has suggested a number of issues in this regard, such as the lack of political agency of migrant workers, misaligned local governance initiatives and discrimination based on origin, caste, ethnicity or sex (Thomas et al. 2020 ). Without an overt attempt by state governments to regain trust and inform migrants of their value to the urban economy, local employment will remain more lucrative and convenient. However, governance can only be effectively implemented with an accurate idea of the extent of the problem. And for that, real-time, accurate data are required. The central government should include improved data gathering instruments, which can be handled digitally through a central database. More frequent migration surveys can also be held, which track mobility trends and constraints in a more accurate manner.

This paper provides insight into the contemporary migrant crisis due to COVID-19, by examining the condition of internal migrant labourers with respect to gender, mental health and social security provisions. Any effective solution to the present migrant crisis requires accurate data on internal migrants which would render visibility to the invisible yet pervasive categories of labourers. Many migrants remain excluded from various governmental schemes due to their ‘neither here, nor there’ status. This should be done in alignment to the intent–impact gap analysis of such schemes. At this juncture, it is critical to revisit NCEUS recommendations and effectively implement them without diluting the specificities. It is also necessary to form a migrant collective for better voice and political agency of migrants.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a larger status paper titled ‘Impact of COVID19 on Internal Migrants in India’ prepared for the UNICEF and Published by Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

1 Note: Effective coverage of social protection is measured as the number of people who are either actively contributing to a social insurance scheme or receiving benefits (contributory or non-contributory), as a percentage of the total population. Health protection is not included under SDG indicator 1.3.1.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Internal Migration and the Covid-19 Pandemic in India

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This chapter looks at the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on internal migrants in India. According to the 2011 Census, there are over 450 million internal migrants, of which a massive 54 million are inter-state migrants. A large number of these migrants consist of labourers who comprise a huge percentage of the informal sector workforce, both in the rural and urban areas of India, and are vital to the country’s economy. These workers are also some of the most vulnerable, with inadequacies in terms of working conditions and coverage of social safety nets, and are also largely absent from India’s policy discourses. This chapter highlights the size and extent of internal migration as well as its distribution across different states in India. It shows how the current crisis and lockdowns have affected their lives and livelihoods. It particularly looks at the responses of central and various state governments – at destinations and origins – to ensure migrants’ wellbeing. It also analyses the socioeconomic impact of the migrant exodus from major destinations and looks at solutions to enable and ensure that migration patterns in the future are sustainable, and more importantly, ensure migrants’ rights and dignity.

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• Internal migration
• Migrant labour
• Migration policy

1 Introduction

The pandemic has led to mass destabilisation of economies and societies across the world. The exponentially rising cases of infections around the globe prompted national lockdowns and near-blanket bans on the movement of people from one place to another. This has had major ramifications the work-life spectrum, but most notably on the lives of migrant workers, especially in India.

In the wake of India’s 25 March 2020 decision to impose a national lockdown, domestic migrants took desperate measures to reach home amid the pandemic and policies taken to contain it, at both the central and state levels. Migrants’ often long treks home were made in the most inhospitable of conditions, frequently with tragic results (Rajan et al., 2020a , b ). In the end, we witnessed what some observers describe as ‘the largest movement of migrants since the partition’ (Ellis-Petersen & Chaurasia, 2020 ).

This chapter examines how the pandemic affected the lives and livelihoods of migrants in India. In doing so, we also critically examine the response of the governments at the central and state levels, thereby providing insights into how we can avoid such a dire situation in the future. In order to understand how these events came to pass, it is important to comprehend the size of the internal migrant population in India.

2 Internal Migration in India: Size and Characteristics

Migration within India has been a prevalent phenomenon throughout its history (Tumbe, 2018 ). The 2011 Census enumerated a staggering 450 million Indians as migrants based on place of last residence – a number representing 37% of the total population. In 2001, their number was at 309 million, with about 140 million added during 2001–2011 (Rajan, 2013 ). In the absence of a reliable estimate until the 2021 Census, we estimate a migrant population of 600 million persons (Fig. 12.1 ) Footnote 1 Based on the 2011 Census, around one-third of all internal migrants are inter-state and inter-district migrants, which makes them a population of almost 200 million. Of these 200 million inter-state and inter-district migrants, two-thirds are workers. This gives us an estimated migrant worker population of about 140 million today (Gupta, 2020 ). If we include intra-district migrant workers, the total number of migrant workers touches 200 million, excluding temporary and circular migrants (Bhagat et al., 2020 ). These migrant workers represent a range of occupations in both urban and rural milieus but are mainly concentrated in temporary, informal, and casual employment and are most vulnerable to exploitation (Keshri & Bhagat, 2013 ).

Trends of internal migration in India, 1971–2011. (Source: Census of India 1981–2011; 2021 numbers based on authors’ projections)

While India’s internal migrants totalled 450 million, the majority are short-distance inter-district migrants within states (Fig. 12.2 ). As per the 2011 Census, there were 117.9 million inter-district migrants and 54.4 million inter-state migrants in India.

Types of internal migrants in India, 1981–2011. (Source: Census of India 1981–2011)

Kone et al. ( 2018 ) note that the proportion of long-distance inter-state migration in India is low compared to other developing countries such as Brazil and China. This is despite the fact that, unlike in China under the hukou system, there are no separate restrictive measures for internal migrants at their destinations. This is due mainly to the non-portability of social welfare schemes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) for subsidised food grain upon which millions of families are dependent and the requirement of state domicile for government jobs – which makes employment-based migration for a large cohort of the employable population challenging. Additionally, migration costs form a large barrier for most migrants to engage in long distance migration between states in India. This becomes extremely important, as there is an increase in the incidence of migration of families instead of individuals.

While most migration occurs within the district for work and employment reasons, other categories of migration happen for education, marriage, and household movement, which are more intra-district in nature (Fig. 12.3 ). As noted earlier, marriage and household migration are based on the movement of migrants with their dependents, which is another, and under-discussed feature of internal migration and one that had major ramifications during the pandemic (Rajan & Sivakumar, 2018a , b ).

Reasons for migration across migrant categories, 2011. (Source: Derived from Census 2011. Note: numbers given are percentages of total migrants)

3 Temporary and Seasonal Migration

Rural India is still heavily dependent on the agricultural sector as the primary source of employment. With agriculture closely linked to seasonality, the sector’s cycle also determines a main component of internal migration within the rural-urban migration stream (mostly temporary and seasonal). It has been estimated that 21 out of every 1000 persons in India is a temporary or seasonal migrant, with the state of Bihar having the highest proportion of 50 temporary migrants per 1000 of the population (Keshri & Bhagat, 2013 ).

When analysing the patterns of temporary and seasonal migration, one finds that those in the lowest quintiles by Monthly Per Capita Income overwhelmingly constitute the bulk of the temporary and seasonal migrants in the country, especially in the rural areas. These patterns reveal that poorer agricultural workers move to the urban areas to earn a livelihood during the agricultural off-season (Table 12.1 ).

The incidence of temporary and seasonal migration varies according to social groups as well, with the propensity for engaging in this type of migration higher among the more marginalised social groups (Table 12.2 ).

As we see, the incidence of temporary and seasonal migration is highest among people belonging to Scheduled Tribes in India – 45 migrants per 1000. Similarly, while not as high, those belonging to the category of Scheduled Castes show a high migration rate of almost 25 per 1000. People belonging to these two categories are amongst the most marginalised sections in society. However, the effect is far more pronounced in rural than in urban areas, with the rate of 49 per 1000 among the Scheduled Tribes and 30 per 1000 among the Scheduled Castes.

These migrants are essential for the basic functioning of both urban and rural industries as they engage inessential labour in a number of formal and mostly informal occupations in major sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, and construction as well as in brick-kilns and textiles (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009 ; Srivastava & Sutradhar, 2016 ).

These characteristics, therefore, make it clear that a large chunk of the migrant population was already living in vulnerable conditions and livelihoods. The pandemic and its subsequent response put this fact under a glaring spotlight.

4 The Government Response: Story of Missteps and Half-Measures

As the infection started spreading across the globe, the Government of India, as part of their initial response, put into place a one-day lockdown called the ‘Janta curfew’ on 22 March 2020. A few days later, it announced a nationwide lockdown from 24 March 2020, giving citizens only four hours’ notice to react. Overnight, transportation lines stopped, leaving passengers stranded and with nowhere to go. The subsequent days and months saw some of the most egregious scenes of desperation and misery in post-independence history. In the wake of the sudden shutting of businesses and industries, hundreds of thousands of migrants – mostly workers in precarious employment situations – and their dependents were forced to take the long road back, often in the most inhospitable conditions and on foot. This resulted in untold hardship, tragedy, and even death (Rajan & Heller, 2020 ).

Scenes of Distress During the Lockdown

The Central Government’s four-hour notice of the national lockdown announced by the Prime Minister in a public address sent panic among migrant workers who feared being stranded with no livelihood at the destination and without a way back home. The scenes of utter despair at New Delhi’s busy Anand Vihar Inter-State Bus Terminal, where thousands of migrants thronged for days to board a bus or train home, were broadcast around the world. Similar scenes were seen in places like Mumbai as well, as panic took hold during the continued lockdown. Many migrants felt they had no choice but to set out on whatever mode of transport they could find. Some had no option but to travel by foot, with tragic consequences – there were estimates of at least 200 migrant deaths on the road while trying to return home (Banerji, 2020 ). When Members of Parliament requested the data on job losses and deaths among migrants during lockdown, the government representative replied that they did not keep a record of this and had no data available. The government merely informed that they were among the over 10 million migrant workers who returned to their home states between March and June (Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 2020 ) illustrating migrants’ marginalisation from policy debates.

Millions of migrants returned to the villages from the big cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai as the lockdown was extended. The exact number of returnees – whether returning by their own vehicle, cycling, or on foot – is not available from government sources. However, those using government-arranged transport – buses and Shramik trains – were said to number 10.5 million, according to data cited on 14 September 2020 by the Lok Sabha, Parliament’s lower house. A large number of migrants returned to the two most populous and among the poorest states, namely Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The state-wise distribution of return migrants is shown in Fig. 12.4 .

Migrants returned to their home states after lockdown. (Source of data: Unstarred Question No. 197, Lok Sabha, 14 September 2020)

4.1 Central Government Response

On 24 March, the Central Government announced the first phase of the national lockdown, which subsequently underwent three more phases with increasingly relaxed restrictions on economic and human activity. However, on 7 June, when it was evident that further lockdowns would not be possible, the central government started initiating various phases of ‘un-lockdowns’, opening various sectors of the economy and ensuring limited mobility within the country.

The suddenness of the initial lockdown left migrants – who, as mentioned earlier, live and work in informal conditions in both rural and urban areas – exposed, and the enduring scenes of great distress caught the nation’s imagination. This put pressure on the Central Government to act. It was in this context that on 13 May, the government announced a raft of assistance measures under the moniker ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ or ‘Self-reliant India’, totalling Rs. 2 trillion (about US$ 300 billion), or 10% of GDP (Rajan, 2020b , c ). The scheme was detailed by the Finance Minister and comprised five aid tranches; the second targeted migrant workers and small farmers. On 14 May, an addition Rs. 10 billion (US$ 134 million) was announced for distribution to the states for migrant welfare under the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) fund. Each state would be given a minimum of 10% or 1 billion (US$ 13.4 million), with additional grants to be allocated based on the state’s population (50% weight) and the number of positive coronavirus cases it has (40% weight). Given that India has 28 states and nine union territories, it is unclear how this division takes place (Rajan & Mishra, 2020 ). The measures for migrant workers within the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ are detailed in Table 12.3 below and can be divided into short-, medium-, and long-term measures.

While these programmes were announced in the face of the pandemic and needed by migrants long before its start, the effectiveness of these schemes is yet to be assessed.

To address the plight of stranded migrants, the government intervened with the Shramik special trains and buses to help them reach their hometowns (Dutta, 2020 ). However, this service was not free and migrants were being charged exorbitant fares at railway stations – which became a source of political bickering. The Supreme Court of India intervened with an order stating that the migrants would not pay any fare, with Indian Railways to bear 85% of the ticket cost and state government to cover the remaining 15% (NDTV, 2020 ). At the same time, a total of 9.1 million migrants travelled on both trains and buses. As of 15 June 2020, almost 4450 Shramik trains had transported more than 60 lakh (6 million) people to their destinations (The Hindu, 2020 ).

The federal nature of the Indian system, however, allows for states to intervene in issues concerning migrants and workers. India’s size and unequal economic and social development – especially with regards to differing windows of demographic dividends – has led to certain states being migrant receivers and others being migrant senders, with states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan as gaining states in terms of its working age population and Kerala and Tamil Nadu as losing states (Rajan & Mishra, 2020 ). A look at these states based on this distinction also yields a larger picture of Indian state responses.

4.2 State-Level Responses

According to the 2011 Census, Delhi, Gujarat, Kerala, and Maharashtra have been the major destination states for migrants in India; Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan are the sending states. Labour is a subject in the ‘concurrent list’ of the Indian constitution, which gives equal right for states to legislate on matters related to it. This federal nature of India’s response to handling the migrant crisis led to a variety of reactions on the part of different states. Migrant-receiving states had to contend with issues like providing stranded migrant workers adequate shelter and essential facilities, and sending states had to contend with issues of large masses of return migrants and provide them quarantine and other testing health facilities. Different policies were implemented in these states, but as we see below, they did not go far enough to address core issues.

4.2.1 Policy Responses in Receiving States

Relief packages . In the early part of the migrant crisis, governments all over the world were scrambling to provide immediate material support to their citizens. This was the case in India as well – the Central Government announced several programmes for immediate relief, culminating in the major $300 billion package on 16 May 2020. However, when it came to state responses, the southern state of Kerala provided a template in addressing the issues of not only migrants, but also other vulnerable groups. It initially announced a comprehensive package of Rs. 200 billion (US$ 2.6 billion) to cover migrant workers’ basic necessities even before the national lockdown and the Central Government’s assistance scheme were announced. Kerala’s initiative was applauded by several countries around the world (Isaac & Sadanandan, 2020 ; Rajan, 2020c , d ; Vijayan, 2020 ). Kerala was the only state to announce a comprehensive package of this sort.

Shelter homes and meals for stranded migrants . Kerala also took the lead in providing shelter and food for migrants stranded in the state. In early April, it was found that over 65% of all government-run shelter homes in India, housing more than 300,000 migrants were in Kerala itself. Moreover, community-run kitchens ensured that migrants did not go hungry while stranded in the state (Rajan, 2020a ). Similarly, the Maharashtra Government had allocated Rs. 450 million (US$ 6.03 million) to setup of shelter homes for stranded migrants with funds from the State Disaster Relief Fund. The government also made provision for mid-day meals for stranded migrant workers registered at construction sites in the cities of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, and Nagpur (Tare, 2020 ). The Government of Gujarat designatedCovid-19 as a disaster under the State Disaster Relief Fund, with all expenditures for stranded migrant labourers to be covered by the Fund (PRS Legislative Research, 2020a , b ).

Food security at destinations . Providing food security for a number of migrant workers stranded at destinations became an immediate point of concern in most receiving states. The highest number of Covid-19 cases was registered in Mumbai, which has a large population that live in slum-like housing conditions. The government of Maharashtra identified around 1.88 million holders of PDS or ration cards as being below the poverty line and were supplied wheat, rice, and coarse grain under the National Food Security Act at the nominal rates of Rs. 3, Rs. 2, and Re. 1, respectively (Ashar, 2020 ). Another 20,000 cardholders were covered under the Antyodaya scheme. About 1 to 1.5 million newly below-poverty-line cardholders were supplied subsidised rations through the public distribution system. The Government of Kerala also set up community kitchens for stranded migrant workers through local self-help groups that at organised these facilities across the state.

Providing a Social Base: The Kerala Model to Revival

Kerala, with its approach to a holistic welfare of its citizens, won praise from around the world for its comprehensive response to the welfare of migrant workers. Apart from its response in the pandemic’s immediate wake, it also took steps towards a post-pandemic revival of its economy and society through a welfare framework. For the poor and vulnerable, Kerala sought to ensure social security during this difficult time. Accordingly, 5.5 million people – elderly, differently-abled and widows – in Kerala were paid Rs. 8500 (US$114) each and the government also provided a sum of Rs. 1000–5000 (US$13.42–67) to 460,000 persons registered in the various labour welfare funds. In addition, 15 kg of rice and a kit of pulses and condiments were distributed free to every household. Free and subsidised meals served through community kitchens and kudumbasree hotels set up since the lockdown were initiated. Moreover, Kerala is implementing two focused schemes in the aftermath of this pandemic. The first, S ubhiksha Keralam is a comprehensive programme aimed at ensuring food security and the second, Vyavasaya Bhadratha , will distribute Department of Industry grants totalling Rs. 34 billion (US$ 455 million) to small, medium, and micro enterprises (MSMEs).

4.2.2 Policy Responses in Sending States

The sending states also provided enormous assistance to their non-resident fellows who worked as migrant workers outside the state. Provision of food, arrangement of transportation, and monetary cash support were important assistance provided during the lockdown. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, and Rajasthan were prominent among states in providing support to the migrant workers originating from there.

In the early days of lockdown, the Uttar Pradesh government tried to ensure that states hosting migrants gave them adequate food and shelter. They also ensured that migrants who were travelling through the state were given adequate food and shelter as they made their way to their destinations (PRS Legislative Research, 2020c ). Similar to Uttar Pradesh, the Government of Rajasthan (another important migrant-sending state) worked during the first phases of the lockdown to arrange for buses at inter-state borders to bring migrant workers home and also set up quarantine centres for them. The Government of Bihar allocated Rs. 1 billion (US$ 13.4 million) from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund on 26 March 2020 to assist migrants stuck in other parts of the country (PRS Legislative Research, 2020c ). Quarantine shelters were set up ad-hoc for the mass of returning migrants; however, reports of inadequate and unhygienic facilities led to major discontent among those who were forced to live there (Chakraborty and Ramashankar, 2020 ). The Bihar government also introduced measures for alleviating the suffering of migrant labourers who returned and were rendered jobless by the pandemic through cash transfers of a lump sum of Rs. 1000. Additionally the government operated 10 food centres in Delhi, which houses the largest number of Bihari migrants, and state-wide nodal officers were appointed to coordinate the relief measures.

Some state governments also took the initiative in providing employment support for migrant workers. The Odisha government, for instance, decided to pay Rs. 1500 to construction workers registered with the Odisha Building and Construction Workers’ Welfare Board. It also approved local bodies such as Gram Panchayats (village councils) and Urban Local Bodies to oversee the welfare of returning migrants, registering and providing them with 14-day quarantine facilities as well as a cash transfer of Rs. 2000 ($26.84) as an incentive for doing so (PRS Legislative Research, 2020c ).

The Uttar Pradesh government announced free one-month rations for 16.5 million registered construction day-wage workers (Press Trust of India, 2020a ), while the Odisha government has provided additional rice of 5 kg per head for 3 months and 1 kg of dal per card for 3 months free to 91,502 cardholders under the State Food Security Scheme. The Odisha State also distributed 1.016 million MT of food grains to beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) compared to normal monthly distributions of 194,000 MT (Press Trust of India, 2020b ). In early April, the Odisha government extended food security coverage to all migrants who returned to the state regardless of whether they possessed a ration card or not.

On 16 June 2020, the Uttar Pradesh government announced it would set up the Uttar Pradesh Labour (Employment Exchange and Job) Commission to employ returning migrant workers in both the public and private sectors, with a particular focus to upgrade skills and boost local economies (Varma, 2020 ). The Madhya Pradesh government followed by announcing the formation of a migrant labour commission along the same lines (Sharma, 2020 ). How these commissions address the issues migrant workers face on the ground, however, remains to be seen. To increase awareness about Covid-19 and its attendant issues, the Rajasthan government established a helpline for stranded and moving migrant workers and a Jan Soochna (public information) portal to disseminate important information regarding the pandemic as these migrants returned to their homes in rural areas (Patil, 2020 ).

As seen above, the varied state responses were, in essence, on-the-spot reactions to the deteriorating situation surrounding the disrupted lives and livelihoods of migrant workers. However, there were many overlaps in state responses as the migrant crisis unfolded in the wake of the national lockdown. What was sorely missing was active coordination among states and between the states and the centre. This was especially evident in logistical issues for ferrying migrant workers back home and tracing. While some measures were more effective than others, it remains to be seen if migrant workers will stay at the forefront of these states’ policies as we move forward. However, the knee-jerk reactions of both the central and state governments were a testament to the lack of a framework for migrants in India. The pandemic provided an opportunity to address the issues by shining a harsh spotlight on it.

5 Missed Opportunities for Reform: The Structures that Impede Migrants

The pandemic-triggered migrant crisis brought clarity to a larger issue of exclusionary development in India, in both the rural and urban landscapes. Even though migrants form an integral part of both these landscapes, their welfare has often been relegated to the periphery of policy discussions. As we have shown, a number of migrants with temporary or seasonal jobs work in a variety of informal occupations across the country’s urban and rural milieus. They are the most vulnerable among the migrant workforce in the country and are precluded from the country’s already flimsy welfare mechanism (Rajan & Bhagat, 2021 ).

A close examination of how this has occurred brings about a clear picture of the issues plaguing India’s internal migrants.

5.1 Inadequacy of Legislation for Migrant Workers

To date, there is only one piece of legislation governing the conditions of migrant workers in India – the Interstate Migrant Workmen’s Act of 1979, which is applicable mostly to contractor-driven migration. However, migrant workers make up a large share of India’s informal workforce, whose conditions and rights are governed by several labour laws with no focus on migrants. Table 12.4 summarises some of prominent Acts and their provisions.

These laws, however, are more conspicuous for their non-implementation, leaving workers bereft of legal means to ensure their rights. The urban exclusion of internal migrants was flagged earlier in a report by UNESCO ( 2013 ). It found that migrants were denied access to rights in the city (Bhagat, 2017 ), often working in informal work with inadequate social and economic security and denied basic access to healthcare and education for their children.

5.1.1 Migrants and the Right to Amenities

In late 2015, the Government of India, through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA), formed the Working Group on Migration to examine laws covering migrant workers. The Working Group submitted its report in early 2017 and noted the large contribution that migrants make to the Indian economy and society (Government of India, 2017a , b ; Rajan & D’Sami, 2020 ). However, it also noted the vulnerabilities and the lack of economic and social security that they face throughout the country. The report made a number of recommendations, such as increased weightage on social protection programmes; enforcement of labour laws; registration of migrant workers; ensuring adequate food security by the portability of the public distribution system; ensuring adequate access to healthcare and education for migrant children; increasing opportunities for skill development; ending the requirement for state domicile to acquire government job; and, policies aimed at migrants’ inclusion into the formal financial system.

The Central Government has amalgamated the various labour laws into four labour codes, namely: (a) Labour Code on Wages; (b) Labour Code on Occupational Safety and Health; (c) Labour Code on Industrial Relations; and (d) Labour Code on Social Security. In 2020, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Codes were passed by Parliament. These codes are a part of the rationalisation of labour legislation in India and subsumed 13 of the current labour laws that governed the health and safety conditions of establishments employing 10 or more workers. This included the Interstate Migrant Workmen’s Act and the Contract Labour Act also. This has led to the annulment or dilution of existing welfare measures for migrant workers in the future.

Certain state governments also sought to use the pandemic as a pretext to amend certain major labour laws, which were later repealed after much pushback (Press Trust of India, 2020c ). These states had also amended the critical Industrial Disputes Act to raise the threshold for layoffs and retrenchment from 100 to 300 workers in a factory and the threshold membership for trade unions from 15% to 30%. These measures aimed to attract investment into the state and kick-start their economies – which is a flawed assumption at best.

5.1.2 The Invisibilisation of Dependents

When we think of migration in India, we normally fixate on the migration to various destinations of men for work, but this is misleading. Migration often involves the whole family, and the dynamics of familial migration is a sorely under-researched phenomenon in the Indian context.

One major fact of internal migration in India, as mentioned above, is the overwhelming dominance of women in its stream, amounting to some 70% of total migrants. While marriage has been cited as the main reason for migration in the past, things are changing, and more women are migrating for work and also working after migrating as a dependent (Parida & Madheswaran, 2019 ). However, given the low female labour participation rate in India, that percentage is still very small. A number of women migrants are still predominantly dependents and the pandemic caused significant hardships to them as well. What was notable, however, was their absence in public debate despite the images of entire families on the road home. Women in the labour force work mostly in the informal sector and are completely overlooked in any discussion. In the current context, four out of every ten women in the country suffered from job loss, amounting to 17 million women (Rajan et al., 2021 ). This is a major part of the story that was missing from the picture presented.

The picture is the same when examining issues of dependents like the elderly, but particularly of children. Migrants move to cities not only for better work opportunities for themselves, but also for better prospects for their children. The pandemic, however, forced hundreds of thousands of children to head back to the villages along with their families, uprooting them from not only their homes but also access to better health and education (Banerji, 2020 ). It is feared that a number of students will be forced to drop out of school because they have to return to villages, which suffer from inadequate educational facilities. This will lead to incalculable loss to their human development and the nation’s well-being.

The pandemic has raged through the country indiscriminately. The policies to contain its spread, however, have been extremely discriminatory – targeting the most vulnerable of the population and leaving their futures in darkness for the foreseeable future. The question from here is how we ensure that migrants get back on their feet and continue to contribute to the nation.

6 Concluding Remarks: Away Forward to Migration and Inclusive Policy

The implementation of the lockdown exposed the central government’s lack of cognizance of the migrant population and their issues. The food insecurity of migrant workers emerged as the most visible deprivation, along with shelter. The non-portability of PDS services across state lines also became evident (Srivastava, 2020 ). We must ensure food security through portability of the ration card in the PDS schemes in the future. As a follow up measure, the Central Government announced the ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ to ensure portability of food security entitlement across India. If implemented successfully next year as proposed, it will go along way towards providing food security for poor migrants.

In addition, the housing scheme – which is likely to take at least 1 year to finish – does very little or nothing to alleviate the ongoing suffering of the migrant labourer. With the lockdown cutting all sources of income, few support schemes have focused on short-term financial relief as the package fails to recognise the immediate distress of migrant workers. In light of the fact that the Indian economy is set to see a contraction in growth in the coming year (World Bank, 2020 ), certain immediate steps need to be taken in order to integrate migration with development (Rajan, 2020d ).

The apathy of the central and state governments is most visible in the collection of reliable and real-time data on migrants in the country. Collected datasets are either too fractured or irregular and out dated like the Census and National Sample Surveys, which do an inadequate job of covering seasonal and temporary migration in the country. When asked in Parliament about the data on the number of migrant workers who suffered job losses during the pandemic and those who died during their journey home, the government callously replied that it had no data for either. Not even a rough estimate was provided, laying bare exactly how marginalised the problems of migrants are in government policy. It is imperative to know the exact size and characteristics of the migrant population in order to come up with holistic and effective policies. This can be organized in numerous ways as suggested below.

The most basic way to ensure this is to have migrants voluntarily self-register at their destinations. These provisions exist in some laws, as mentioned earlier, but are ineffective. We need to have robust administrative data on the number of migrants in the country. This can be complemented with large scale datasets like the Census, the National Sample Survey, the Kerala Migration Survey (Rajan et al., 2020 ) and the Indian Human Development Survey to gain a disaggregated temporal view of migration.

A second initiative we could implement is issuing everyone who migrates to another state for work with a Migrant Smart Card, which can be swiped at bus or railway stations when they travel. This Smart Card would contain their socioeconomic details, may be linked to the Aadhaar or Ration Card as well as details about their work contract and employer’s details so that they have a means of official restitution in times of disputes with the employers. This will identify the holder as a migrant worker to be given benefits as per their requirements. The use of this card would also provide a real-time look at migration within the country.

Finally, it is high time the Central Government invested in a pan-India migration survey, similar to the Kerala Migration Survey that the Government of Kerala has used to great effect to understand migration patterns and trends from the state over the years (Rajan & Zachariah, 2019 ; Zachariah et al., 1999 , 2000 ). It is no coincidence that Kerala handled the Covid-19 migrant crisis best. In fact, current estimates based on train passenger travel data show only the tip of the iceberg.

The government missed a huge opportunity to announce at least an ex-gratia payment to every migrant worker in the form of a Rs. 25,000 cash transfer in the immediate period. This would be compensation for the lost man-days of work and wages for migrant workers during the two-month lockdown. Cash transfers are the most efficient way to stimulate the economy, seen even in the case of the US, which provided a $1200 stimulus check for 3 months to taxpayers as part of a $1 trillion stabilisation programme (Sullivan, 2020 ) Even if we were to send a sum of Rs. 25,000 to every inter-state and inter-district migrant worker, earlier estimated at 140 million, this would amount to a total of Rs. 3.5 trillion, which is about one-sixth of the package announced. This cash support would have been more far more helpful for returning workers to cover some of the income they lost during the lockdown period and would have provided some form of security to help overcome their desperation, making them self-reliant in the true sense of the term (Rajan, 2020c , d ).

This cash could have also stimulated local economies by giving a sizeable share of the population the purchasing power it currently lacks. This would go a long way in the revival of ‘animal spirits’, as John Maynard Keynes once famously said, within the depressed rural economies, as immediate cash transfers will ensure spending that would kickstart a multiplier effect once economic normality resumes. On the production side, the government should ensure that proper financing and credit lines – among other stimuli– should open up for industries to revive once again. This ensures that migrants have an incentive to return to destinations, which they currently will be wary of doing. Having migrants register for this cash support at the destinations would have also given the various governments an accurate estimate of the number of stranded migrants – something that we crucially lack at present.

Rural public works programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act have proved to be the most robust social security net during the crisis. Along with increases in the allocated budget and in person-days of work, it is also important to increase the days of work to at least 180–200 days of work per year, or at least 15 days per month. This may still cover only a fraction of their earnings from their work at the destinations. Furthermore, this is still a conditional arrangement based on registration for work and not an immediate measure. However, it is a rights-based security net that needs to be extended to urban areas.

Migrant workers have traditionally been on the periphery of government policymaking as they are an invisible voter pool (Rajan et al., 2019 ). Many cannot vote in their hometowns due to the nature of their work. The portability of voting rights could emerge an empowerment strategy for migrant workers and ensure a sustainable progress in the post-pandemic world.

7 Postscript

India has seen a very sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in the second wave that started in early February 2021 and peaked near the first week of May 2021, with cases reported to be more than 400,000 and deaths about 4000 daily. This was exponentially more severe than the first wave. Although new COVID-19 cases started declining after first week of May 2021, it has devastated more lives and livelihoods. The genesis of the second wave is attributed to the lack of Covid-appropriate behaviour, social and political gatherings due to religious activities and elections that were held in between. There was also the complacency that the country had overcome the COVID-19 health crisis. However, the government was cautious in putting strict lockdowns and restrictions, and transport services were allowed to be operational. The second wave, in spite of being severe and devastating, did not create a migration crisis as seen during the first wave with its visible and pathetic exodus of migrants. This is not to say that there was not a flight of migrant workers, but that it was slower and less visible. Unfortunately, most of the policy measures for migrants announced during the first wave have not taken any concrete shape and remains mere announcements mainly due to the fact that the second wave brought forth shocking inadequacies in India’s medical infrastructure such as shortage of oxygen, hospital beds, medicines and vaccines. This demonstrates that policy measures are ad-hoc, partial and short-sighted instead of being long term, holistic and integrated.

The senior author came to this figure based on an estimated trend of additions to migrants through previous censuses. There was an increase of 140 million migrants from 2001 to 2011. In the intervening years, given government-led urbanisation programmes like the Smart Cities initiatives, internal migration would have increased in the 2011–2021 period. However, the rise in migrants often sees a slight lag given that individual migrants move first and then bring their families to their destinations. Therefore, in the absence of a reliable estimate in the 2011–2021 period, if we were to add the same number of migrants as seen in 2001–2011 period, we have a migrant population of almost 600 million. One of the defining characteristics of internal migration in India is that 7 out of 10 internal migrants in India are women (Rajan & Sumeeta, 2019a , b ).

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Key facts about recent trends in global migration

The number of international migrants grew to 281 million in 2020, meaning that 3.6% of the world’s people lived outside their country of birth that year, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) . The increase came despite widespread restrictions on travel and international movement in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic .

Here are eight key facts about international migrants, based on the latest available data from the UN and other sources.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand trends in global migration and remittances, or the money that migrants send back to their home countries.

Data on the number of international migrants comes from the 2020 International Migrant Stock datasets from the United Nations. Data on the number of refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people and other globally displaced Venezuelans comes from the UN’s World Migration Report 2022 . The total population estimates for countries and regions used to calculate ratios and percentages for charts come from the UN’s 2022 World Population Prospects dataset . Intraregional migration data for Latin America comes from the International Organization for Migration regional office for South America and Central America, North America and the Caribbean.

To examine changes in monthly remittances during the COVID-19 pandemic, this analysis uses global estimates of remittance flows from the World Bank.

The UN uses a taxonomy of regions, nations and territories that counts those who were born in Puerto Rico and are living in the 50 states or the District of Columbia as international migrants to the U.S., even though they are U.S. citizens by birth. For this reason, some UN estimates of the foreign-born population shown here may differ from other estimates published by the U.S. Census Bureau or Pew Research Center.

Europe and Asia have the most international migrants. An estimated 86.7 million international migrants lived in Europe in 2020, followed by 85.6 million in Asia. The number of international migrants living in these two regions has steadily increased since 2005, according to the IOM.

The Latin America and Caribbean region has the fastest-growing international migrant population. Since 2005, the region’s international migrant population has roughly doubled.

International migrants make up a larger share of Oceania’s population than any other region. In 2020, 21.4% of all residents in Oceania – which includes Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific island nations and territories – were international migrants. The Northern America region is second after Oceania, with migrants making up 15.7% of the population. In Europe, migrants account for 11.6% of the population. In all other world regions, they represent 2.3% or less of the population.

Using other regional groupings, however, Oceania might be surpassed. For example, in Gulf Cooperation Council countries – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – more than half (52.7%) of resident populations are international migrants, according to UN data.

The United States has more international migrants than any other country. With nearly 51 million migrants in 2020, the U.S. leads the world on this measure by a wide margin. Germany has the next-largest such population with about 15.8 million migrants, followed by Saudi Arabia with 13.5 million. (For the U.S., the UN counts some people living in the 50 states or the District of Columbia as international migrants even if they were born in Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories; those born in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories are U.S. citizens at birth.)

The countries that have the most international migrants are generally not the same countries where international migrants make up the greatest share of the population. For example, while the U.S. has more migrants than any other nation, migrants only account for about 15.1% of the U.S. population – a smaller share than in 24 countries or territories with a total population of at least 1 million.

The Middle East accounts for most of the top 10 countries when looking at the migrant share of the population. In 2020, 93.9% of all people living in the United Arab Emirates were international migrants, followed by 80.6% of people in Qatar and 71.3% of people in Kuwait. Other Middle Eastern countries among the top 10 include Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon.

India remains the top origin country for the world’s migrants. India has been a large source of international migrants for more than a century. In 2020, 17.9 million international migrants traced their origins back to India, followed by Mexico with about 11.2 million and Russia with about 10.8 million.

India’s migrants are dispersed around the world, but the countries with the largest Indian migrant populations are the United Arab Emirates (3.5 million), the U.S. (2.7 million) and Saudi Arabia (2.5 million).

Though India is the single largest source of international migrants, its 17.9 million migrants in 2020 accounted for only 1.3% of all people born in India by that year. By comparison, the United Kingdom’s 4.7 million international migrants accounted for 7.6% of those born in the UK by 2020. Mexico’s 11.2 million international migrants accounted for 8.2% of those born in Mexico.

Remittances – the money that migrants send to their home countries – decreased by about $11 billion from 2019 to 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic arrived. Global remittances had been steadily increasing since 2010, but they fell from $722 billion in 2019 to $711 billion in 2020. (These figures are nominal values, meaning they are not adjusted for inflation.) Notably, some countries in Latin America saw remittances fall sharply in the first half of 2020 – especially in April, when much of the U.S. was locked down due to the COVID-19 outbreak – before rebounding.

According to the World Bank, remittances reached $781 billion in 2021 and are estimated to reach $794 billion in 2022, both record highs.

India has been the world’s top receiver of remittances since 2010. Remittances to India grew from $53 billion in 2010 to $89 billion in 2021.

The U.S. has been the top sending country for remittances since 1990, the earliest year with available statistics. In 2021, international migrants living in the U.S. sent $73 billion in remittances globally.

The number of displaced people in the world rose to a new high of 89.4 million in 2020. Displaced people are those forced to leave their homes due to conflict, violence or disasters. They include refugees , asylum seekers , and people internally displaced within their country of birth. Overall, the number of displaced persons rose from 84.8 million in 2019 to 89.4 million in 2020, according to the UN’s World Migration Report 2022 . Overall, about 1.1% of the world’s population are displaced people.

Among the world’s displaced people, about 34%, or 30.5 million, were living outside their country of birth as refugees (26.4 million) or asylum seekers (4.1 million) in 2020. An additional 3.9 million displaced Venezuelans who have not applied for refugee or asylum status lived outside of Venezuela in 2020. The majority of displaced people, 55 million, were internally displaced in their birth countries because of conflict, violence or disasters.

The share of international migrants who are men has ticked up in recent decades. In 2000, 50.6% of international migrants were men and 49.4% were women. By 2020, men made up 51.9% of global migrants while 48.1% were women, according to estimates by the United Nations.

A majority of the world’s international migrants lived within their region of origin in 2020. While some migrants may go to new regions of the world, a majority (54.9%) lived within their region of origin in 2020. However, international migration within regions still varies widely. For example, 69.9% of Europe’s international migrants resided in another European country in 2020, reflecting migration out of Eastern European countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Romania to Western European ones.

International migrants in Asia and Oceania are the next most likely to live in their region of origin at 59.6% and 56.2%, respectively. Migrants from Africa are about as likely to live within Africa as they are to live outside of the continent (51.6% vs. 48.4%).

Migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the Northern America region, are the least likely to live within their region of origin, at 26.3% and 25.2%, respectively.

Note: Here is the UN’s list of  countries and territories grouped by region .

• Immigrant Populations
• Immigration & Migration
• Immigration Trends
• Remittances

Anusha Natarajan is a former intern at Pew Research Center

Mohamad Moslimani is a research assistant focusing on race and ethnicity at Pew Research Center

Mark Hugo Lopez is director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center

Key facts about Asian Americans living in poverty

Latinos’ views on the migrant situation at the u.s.-mexico border, key facts about the nation’s 47.9 million black americans, key facts about the wealth of immigrant households during the covid-19 pandemic, what we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the u.s., most popular.

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Return Migration and Human Capital Flows

We bring to bear a novel dataset covering the employment history of about 450 million individuals from 180 countries to study return migration and the impact of skilled international migration on human capital stocks across countries. Return migration is a common phenomenon, with 38% of skilled migrants returning to their origin countries within 10 years. Return migration is significantly correlated with industry growth in the origin and destination countries, and is asymmetrically exposed to negative firm employment growth. Using an AKM-style model, we identify worker and country-firm fixed effects, as well as the returns to experience and education by location and current workplace. For workers in emerging economies, the returns to a year of experience in the United States are 59-204% higher than a year of experience in the origin country. Migrants to advanced economies are positively selected on ability relative to stayers, while within this migrant population, returnees exhibit lower ability. Simulations suggest that eliminating skilled international migration would have highly heterogeneous effects across countries, adjusting total (average) human capital stocks within a range of -60% to 40% (-3% to 4%).

We thank seminar participants at UC Berkeley Macro-Lunch, CKGSB, West Coast Trade Workshop 2024, NBER Labor Studies 2024 Spring Meeting, West Coast Spatial Workshop 2024, and Wharton Real Estate. We are particularly grateful to Gaurav Khanna, Mathilde Muñoz, Emi Nakamura, Andrés Rodríguez-Clare and Benjamin Schoefer. This work was supported by the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics and the Clausen Center at UC Berkeley. All remaining errors are ours. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Mathematics > Probability

Title: critical multitype branching processes with random migration.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to introduce a multitype branching process with random migration following the research initiated with the Galton-Watson process with migration introduced in [Yanev & Mitov (1980) C. R. Acad. Bulg. Sci. 33(4):473-475]. We focus our attention in what we call the critical case. Sufficient conditions are provided for the process to have unlimited growth or not. Furthermore, using suitable normalizing sequences, we study the asymptotic distribution of the process. Finally, we obtain a Feller-type diffusion approximation.

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UGC NET 2024 Paper 1: List of topics you must prepare for

Apr 26, 2024

Teaching Aptitude

Teaching methods encompass various strategies such as lectures, discussions, and demonstrations, each suited to different learning objectives and audiences. A good teacher possesses qualities like patience, effective communication skills, and adaptability to engage and inspire learners.

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Classroom Management

Effective classroom management techniques are essential for maintaining a productive learning environment. This includes establishing clear expectations, managing behavior, and fostering positive relationships among students.

Evaluation Methods

Assessment methods such as assignments and tests are crucial for measuring students' understanding and progress. Choosing appropriate evaluation techniques aligned with learning objectives ensures fair and accurate assessment.

Learner's Characteristics

Understanding Piaget's stages of cognitive development helps educators tailor instruction to meet students' cognitive abilities. Recognizing diverse learning styles, including auditory, visual, and kinesthetic, allows for differentiated instruction to cater to individual needs.

Individual Differences

Every learner is unique, with varying abilities, backgrounds, and motivations. Acknowledging and addressing these differences is vital for creating inclusive learning environments and fostering student success.

Factors Affecting Teaching

Effective curriculum design is fundamental to facilitating meaningful learning experiences. Integrating teaching aids and technology enhances engagement and understanding, while the learning environment and external influences like parental involvement play significant roles in shaping learning outcomes.

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Infrastructure & learning environment.

The physical and social environment in which learning occurs significantly impacts student engagement and achievement. Providing adequate infrastructure and cultivating a supportive learning atmosphere are essential for maximizing learning potential

Teaching Methods

Utilising e-learning platforms like SWAYAM and MOOCs expands access to educational resources and promotes self-directed learning. Group discussions and collaborative learning activities foster critical thinking, communication skills, and peer interaction.

Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking

Encouraging problem-solving methods and critical thinking skills development empowers learners to analyze situations, explore alternatives, and make informed decisions. Balancing learner-centered and teacher-centered approaches fosters active engagement and deep understanding.

Research Aptitude

Differentiating between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies informs effective research design and data collection techniques. Upholding research ethics and avoiding plagiarism ensures the integrity and credibility of scholarly inquiry.

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Next: Meet Nilkrishna Gajare: A Farmer's Son Who Topped JEE Main 2024

The Indian Supreme Court (SC) rejected Friday a plea seeking 100 percent cross-verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) data with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) records. An EVM is a voting device that uses electronic means to aid or complete the tasks of casting and counting votes. The VVPAT, introduced during India’s Lok Sabha elections in 2014, provides a paper trail for verifying votes in the absence of traditional paper ballots.

The SC acknowledged that there have been repetitive petitions against the usage of EVMs in elections, and the issue requires a conclusive verdict. The judgment added:

We have conducted an in-detail review of the administrative and technical safeguards of the EVM mechanism. Our discussion aims to address the uncertainties and provide assurance regarding the integrity of the electoral process. A voting mechanism must uphold and adhere to the principles of security, accountability, and accuracy. An overcomplex voting system may engender doubt and uncertainty, thereby easing the chances of manipulation. In our considered opinion, the EVMs are simple, secure and user-friendly. The voters, candidates and their representatives, and the officials of the ECI are aware of the nitty-gritty of the EVM system. They also check and ensure righteousness and integrity. Moreover, the incorporation of the VVPAT system fortifies the principle of vote verifiability, thereby enhancing the overall accountability of the electoral process.

However, to further enhance the integrity of the election process, the SC gave two directions for implementation. It includes VVPAT symbol loading units (SLU) to be sealed and stored alongside EVMs for 45 days post-results. When a voter casts their vote using the EVM, the VVPAT prints a paper slip with the chosen candidate’s name and symbol. The SLUs ensure the correct symbol is displayed on the VVPAT paper slip for the selected candidate. Additionally, five percent of EVMs’ memory is to be verified post-results, with expenses borne by candidates requesting the check, which is refundable if tampering is found.

The Indian general election is currently underway, running from April 19 to June 1 in seven phases. This election is responsible for election of Members of Parliament for the lower house, Lok Sabha, and consequently the prime minister as well as the central government of the country.

World Intellectual Property Organization created

On April 26, 1970, the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) went into force, creating WIPO. WIPO is a United Nations agency that works to promote intellectual property rights in the international community. Today, 184 nations have signed the convention. Learn more about WIPO .

US soldier arrested for killing John Wilkes Booth

On April 26, 1865, Sergeant Thomas P. Corbett was placed under technical arrest for killing John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. Charges against Corbett were dropped by Secretary of War Stanton, and Corbett received a share of the reward money for Booth, which amounted to $1,653.85. Learn more about Thomas P. Corbett.

What caused Dubai floods? Experts cite climate change, not cloud seeding

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The French industry minister Roland Lescure on Friday launched a call for interest for carbon capture at various sites to help carbon-intense industries abate emissions.

China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) has secured its first yuan-denominated trade finance to import Chinese PV modules for a solar plant in Brazil, official media said on Friday.

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Biden says he plans to debate Trump

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday that he would participate in a debate with Donald Trump, his Republican opponent in November's election.