Who is a 'migrant'?

One-third of India’s population is on the move and they are technically 'migrants'

The term “migrants” caught everyone’s attention when militants indulged in a spate of targeted killings of non-locals in Kashmir recently. The term also depicted a sorry state of workers fleeing back to native places after losing their livelihood in host cities and towns due to pandemic-triggered lockdowns last year.

Defining a ‘migrant’

According to the Indian Registrar General of Census, “When a person is enumerated in the census at a different place than her/his place of birth, she/he is considered a migrant.”

The National Sample Survey (1999-2000) defined migration as: “persons staying away from their usual place of residence for 60 days or more for employment or better employment or in search of employment.”

Going by these definitions, I have been a “migrant” all my life. At the age of two, I migrated from my village to the nearby city to get a “convent education” staying with one of my distant relatives. Then I moved to my maternal aunt’s place in the same city to continue my education.

I returned to my home briefly only to move back to the city to reside in college hostels. Then to pursue my higher education, I moved to New Delhi and then to the United States.

I got back to India and was employed in Delhi. Soon after the marriage, my wife became a “migrant” as she accompanied me. Now, I have moved to another city in the country along with my family. I am not sure whether this will be my final destination.

Real migrants

One-third of India’s population is like me: they are on the move and are technically “migrants”. The World Bank puts that number to 40 million. But I wonder why none ever called me a “migrant”?

Does it have anything to do with my white-collar profession? Or is it because of my high education level? Or is it my income and wealth? Or something else?

The fact is that the so-called “migrants” are less grounded in a particular place and are ready to move according to the wind direction of the job market: a kind of economic nomadism. They take up those jobs that locals wish not to do or lack the skills to do. There is a “will issue” than a “skill issue”.

They are often construction workers, housemaids, rickshaw pullers, hawkers, vendors, carpenters, plumbers, painters, loaders, harvesters, security guards, cooks, and the like, mostly in the unorganised sector.

They are cheap to hire, not part of any labour union, leave less paper trail, live in shanties and mostly from the marginalised communities. They are usually not beneficiaries of social welfare programmes in the host cities.

Economic option of labour

That way “migrants” are considered cost-effective and hardworking. They are necessary to run the wheels of the local economy, but not given due importance.

They are the modern-day “Girmityas”, who are unaware of their final destination, both in short and long terms. They mostly flee due to economic distress from eastern and northern states of India in search of better livelihood to western and southern states or even to far off places like Jammu and Kashmir.

Usually, since most of the “migrants” registered themselves as voters in their native places, they do not have political clout in the place of migration. As a result, they are victims of nativist or “sons of the soil” politics and face political exclusion.

Pejorative terms like “South Indian vultures” and “bhaiyas” are still in vogue in some cities of India. While Indian governments pamper Indian migrants abroad, internal migrants are the “wretched of the Earth”: ignored, forgotten, overlooked and unheeded.

(The author is with the Department of International Studies, Political Science and History, Christ University, Bengaluru)