7 Migration and the Indian City

Ashima Sood

I.            Introduction

Whether it was the refugees of Partition in Kolkata and Delhi, or the eponymous Shree 420 of 1950s Bollywood arriving in Mayanagari Mumbai, or the famous migrant workers of Mahabubnagar in Hyderabad, Indian cities have always been constructed through the labour and aspirations of rural migrants.

Rao (1981, 21) offers the following definition and types of migration:

Migration is a shift in the place of residence for some length of time. While it excludes short visits and tours, it includes different types of both voluntary and involuntary movements. Examples of involuntary movements are migration under such crises as war, transfer of population, riots, floods, droughts and earth-quakes. It also includes marriage migration –virilocal, uxorilocal or neolocal — and transfer migration. There are other situations of migration where movement is part of people’s earning a livelihood. These are nomads, shifting cultivators, itinerant traders and salesmen artisans and labourers.

Although the universe of migration studies is vast, in this module, we focus on issues surrounding rural to urban migration in the Indian context, and especially employment-related migration. This module asks: what are the dimensions of such rural to urban migration? How are migrants received in Indian cities and how do they in turn shape these cities?

Interestingly, economists regard rates of rural to urban migration in India as being very low, especially in comparison compared to other developing countries (Munshi and Rosenzweig 2016). Analysing census data over the 40 years from 1961-2001, these authors found that rural males between ages 25-49, the economically productive age group, only migrated at rates ranging from 4% to 5.4%. Munshi and Rosenzweig (2016) also report that Brazil’s migration rate in 1997 (13.9%) was more than twice that of India’s (5.3%).

In considering the important themes in the literature on rural to urban migration, and delineating its scale, it becomes evident that the wholesale transfer of rural and agrarian populations to rapidly rising urban centres that characterized the growth trajectories of developed nations did not quite materialize in India. Instead circular forms of mobility predominate in the Indian context, even though they are notoriously difficult to measure (Sood 2010, 2014). As Sood (2010) has argued, these circular migrants often remain undercounted:

India’s circular migrants and commuters comprise a vast labour force of invisible workers. They power construction booms and urban growth, but rarely if ever wait to be counted by the census taker. The makeshift settlements where they congregate often elude household surveys.

The next section first discusses existing data on rural to urban migration. Then the module goes to discuss major paradigms that have driven understanding of the urban in India.

Dimensions of Rural-Urban Migration

Rural-to urban migration is one of the main components of urban growth in India. Bhagat (2011b, 50) suggests that there were 101 million, or over 10 crore migrants in urban India in 2001 Census data. In-migrants comprised 35% of the population of urban areas, according to the 2010 NSS data (p 50). Furthermore, employment-related reasons motivated as many as 62% of male rural to urban migration (p 51).

Where do migration flows fit into the larger rubric of urban growth in India? As Bhagat and Mohanty (2009, 12) note, urban growth can be decomposed into four discrete components (p 14):

(i)     Natural population  increase;

(ii)    net migration into urban areas;

(iii)   net reclassification of settlements as towns;

(iv)  extension of urban centre boundaries.

Together with rural-urban reclassification, net rural to urban migration accounted for 56% of urban population growth over 2001-2011, increasing from 42% over the period 1991-2001 (Bhagat 2011a, 11).

Mohanty and Bhagat (2009) also analysed migration data over the period 1971-2001 and found that growth rate of inter-state migrants of 0-9 years duration in 1991-2001 was a whopping 76.5%. These authors thus concluded that, “The most important fact emerging from the analysis of the components of urban growth of major states is that the less urbanized states are growing mostly through natural increase, whereas the contribution of migration continues to be higher in more urbanized states, though even in these states, it contributes not more than one-third of the urban growth” (2009, 18).

Using Census Data 2011, Bhagat (2011b, 51) also provides a break-up of the share of all in-migrants in million-plus cities. This number ranged from a low of about 15% in Agra and Allahabad, to 45% in major metros such as Delhi and Mumbai to 55% or more in Ludhiana and Surat.

According to Census data, no more than 35% of all migrants find regular/salaried employment and as many as 30% are casually employed (Bhagat 2011b, 51). These numbers point to the importance of the link between migration and the urban informal economy. (See also Module 4.1). We discuss this connection in a later section

II.      Temporary migrations?

After pioneering anthropological accounts by Breman (1993, 1996) that provided a decades-long longitudinal view of circular migration in rural Gujarat, the impacts of seasonal and temporary migration streams on urban informal markets have remained largely unexamined (Sood 2014). Policy reviews, such as Deshingkar (2006) and Sabates-Wheeler and Waddington (2003), have relied on work on sending areas conducted within policy-oriented or regional frameworks.

In India, 2007-08 data from the National Sample Survey showed that a whopping 63% of seasonal and temporary migrants – defined as ““the household member who has stayed away from the village/town for a period of one month or more but less than six months during the last 365 days, for employment or in search of employment” (Bhagat 2011: 5) – went towards urban centres. Analysis of the 64th round NSS data, which broadened the definition of temporary migration to “stay[ing] away from the village or town for a period of 30 days to six months” (Keshri and Bhagat 2012:82) yields a richer portrait of short-term migration patterns. However, it suggests that only about 13.5 million workers in 2007-08 fell under this category. (Also see Sood 2014)

In comparison to informal estimates derived from primary studies, these numbers are believed to be undercounts of the true magnitudes (Deshingkar and Farrington 2009c; Chandrashekhar and Sharma 2012:4). As Srivastava and Sasikumar (2003) suggested, the major data sources on population mobility in India – the Census and the National Sample Survey (NSS) – underestimate temporary, seasonal and circulatory migration both because worker mobility is difficult to measure using the categories of population mobility, and because migration is a multi-dimensional, and increasingly complex process, as rural and urban economies become ever-more interlinked

How do these migration streams impact particular cities? In the absence of such disaggregated data in India, a sense of the magnitudes involved can be obtained from a South-Eastern Asian study – Thailand’s National Migration Survey – which estimated the wet-season and dry-season populations of Bangkok differed by as much as 9 percent (Chamratrithirong et al 1995).

If estimates of the scale of circular migration remain vague, micro-studies have been more attentive to the phenomenon of temporary migration. The following sections highlight findings from some of these studies. However, from a policy perspective, the importance of occupational and geographic mobility, particularly temporary and commuter migration, in the livelihood diversification strategies of the poor is only now being recognized (Ellis 1998; Dev 2002; Deshingkar 2006; Deshingkar and Grimm 2005).

Even in countries in South East Asia and Africa where the importance of temporary migration streams have been too noticeable to neglect (Hoang, Tacoli, and Dong 2005; Guest 2003; Bigsten 1996; Collinson, Tollman, Kahn, Clark, and Garenne 2003; VanWey 2003), available empirical and analytical perspectives focus on sending areas. Many of these studies shed important light on the motivations of temporary migrants and on their mobility patterns. For instance, Lucas (2003) considers how target savings compares as an economic explanation for circular migration, and offers an analytical approach to understanding “the simultaneous choice of location for living and for working” (p. 17).

In India, Banerjee (1983) has outlined the importance of chain and serial migration – “movements characterized by . . . interactions between migrants and destination-based contacts” especially as it pertains to labour migrants. The pattern of assistance included boarding and lodging and monetary help but most importantly help with job search in at least three-fourths of newly-arrived migrants in this study.

Reasons to migrate

It is useful here to take a step back and consider some of the factors that drive migration. Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan (2003a) identify two major paradigms of migration. The marginalist or dual economy model attributes migration to wage differentials between the two sectors – one, rural/ traditional/ low wage and the other urban/modern/high wage. Marxist models on the other hand view (temporary) migrants as a surplus labour pool used by dominant groups to drive down wages and weaken the possibility of collective action.

    Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan (2003a, 193) argue, however, that “migration as a social and cultural process, not merely an economic one.” In this perspective (p 193), “cyclical migration may occur because it can allow agents to loosen, and occasionally repudiate, institutionalized forms of authority and control that are exercised through the rural labour process.” This theorization views migrants as vectors of ideas and “political sensibilities” (p 204), from the urban to the rural and vice versa. One implication of their work is that the correlation between economic insecurity and tendency to migrate is not quite direct. Instead, migration can become a political act of protest against agrarian iniquities. Shah’s (2009) work on Adivasi migrants in Jharkhand similarly shows that migration is far from an economic decision alone. Many villagers prefer to migrate, even though they could earn more at home. Instead, migrants braved the difficult housing and work conditions at the brick kilns around the highly urbanized Hoogly district of West Bengal, partly to escape the social constraints of village life.

Mosse et al (2005, 3025) followed the migrations of bhil adivasis from “the rural tribal communities of the borderlands of south Rajasthan, western Madhya Pradesh and eastern Gujarat”. These authors estimated that as of a 1996-97 survey, about 65% of households in 42 villages were involved in seasonal migration for informal work primarily in the urban construction sector in centres such as Surat, Vadodara and Ahmedabad. The recruiters — “labour gang leaders, jobbing recruiter-supervisors and labour contractors” (p 3026) – led the migrants through clearly delineated migration pathways to the same destinations year after year.

Mosse et al (2005) offer a richly detailed account of these journeys, showing how migration networks get built. These authors identified three distinct recruitment systems. In the first, enterprising migrants travelled to nearby towns and hired themselves out at local nakas or informal labour markets. In the second, families or kin groups, including young women, with direct connection to hiring builders travelled together. In the third case, the poorest and least connected migrants are hired directly from villages by mukaddams or labour brokers, who had often themselves migrated and now settled in cities as supervisors or moneylenders. These mukaddams negotiated the terms and cash advances with urban employers, and took these gangs of migrants long distances at weak terms and poor recompense. The agency of the migrant was the lowest with this type of migration.

Migration and the Urban Informal Economy

The most influential and wide-ranging study of circular migration in India is the Dutch anthropologist Jan Breman’s work on the Adivasi Halpatis of South Gujarat, who travel from their villages to the largest nearby city of Surat (1996). After a research programme started in the early 1960s, Breman found that agricultural work had ceased to be the main income source for village households by the mid-1980s.

Even according to the 2011 Census, Surat was one of the top ten cities in India by population, second in Gujarat only to Ahmedabad. Despite the presence of large corporates such as Reliance, Larsen and Toubro and Essar, as well as ONGC and IOC, Surat’s economy and landscape are dominated by the informal sector and informal habitation. Transient workers and migrants depended on makeshift shelter – temporary roadside jhuggis, workplace dormitories, buildings under construction, factory sheds. Breman estimated that for 10-15% of the labour force, the workplace doubles as living space. On the other hand, slums are manufacturing and trading centres as much as residential areas. Meanwhile the high end formal enclaves remain out of reach for migrant workers.

In Breman’s (1996) study, the vast majority of industrial labour in Surat consisted of migrants — a “footloose proletariat”. The industries in which they found semi-permanent work included textiles and diamond ateliers. Turnover in these industries was high and employers could dismiss workers summarily with little explanation. Furthermore, as Breman notes (1996, 70), “Urban employment in the informal sector is marked by a cyclicality that is usually associated with an agrarian-rural economic lifestyle.” Thus there was little concept of “leave” or vacation time – employees who took days off for sickness or travel stood to lose their jobs. Starting with the work of Breman, migration streams into urban Gujarat have been the subject of a relatively larger pool of studies. Joshi and Khandelwal (2009) trace the migration trajectories from Rajasthan’s Gogunda block to Gujarat’s urban textile markets. Hired through labour contractors, often as child workers, these migrants find work in yarn mills, looms, cloth mills and textile markets in cities such as Surat, where they live in dingy conditions and are on the job for long hours.

Mosse et al’s (2005) adivasi migrants also faced extremely harsh conditions at their destinations at subsistence wages, and women and children suffered the most. These authors argued that the available legal protections fell woefully short in the face of the specific circumstances of Adivasi migrants in the construction sector. For one, many of the labour laws, such as minimum wage, were geared to formal modes of employment. Second, Adivasi migrants lacked institutional and social access to the enforcement apparatus and the labour officers who man it. This was also true for healthcare, municipal and urban development authorities, who viewed these migrants as “nuisances” (p 3030). Moreover, even labour unions remained un-attuned to the unique challenges of migrant Adivasi workers.

  An interesting – and ironic – phenomenon was the employment of Adivasi workers on contracted public works projects, often at wages far below the legal minimum. According to these authors, the lack of a political collective is the fundamental difficulty facing migrant workers, as much as their reliance on the very agents that seek to exploit them – mukaddams, builders and the naka.

Rao (1981) suggested some reasons why collective action among migrant workers remains so difficult. “Inter-ethnic relations” are a critical issue in urban migration (Rao 1981, 23) because ethnicity determines co-location and patterns of segregation, as well as collective action in Indian cities. Moreover, Marxist theories of migration suggest the possibility of labour market competition between migrants and local residents. All of these processes serve to fragment migrant and non-migrant communities.

Rural cosmopolitanism and rural-urban circulation

Drawing on a broad array of case studies from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, as well as the work of authors such as Jan Breman (1996), Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan (2003a) argue that circular migration has been a longstanding element of the survival strategies deployed by Dalits and Adivasis, especially in dryland areas. These authors view such migrants as representative of a “rural cosmopolitanism” – “in that they straddle, with great facility (but considerably more hardship) two different cultural worlds” (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003b, 342). Poorer migrants may have a spatially circumscribed access to the city but migration also transforms the political consciousness of disadvantaged and Dalit communities (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003b).

The authors contrast the “plebeian cosmopolitans”, such as the domestic workers who migrate between Chennai and their homes in surrounding villages and the “patrician cosmopolitans”, their employers — white collar workers — who retain a foothold both in the city and the village. In this way, circular migrants bridge and “disrupt” the divide between “the space of the conventionally ’urban’ and ‘rural’ (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan 2003b, 342).

Jodhka’s (2012) work, focusing on two Haryana villages on the periphery of the National Capital Region, also reveals the spatial form of the rural-urban continuum. Many of his respondents commuted to nearby urban centres, even while continuing to live in the villages. Many Dalits in this study (almost 28%) had regular or government jobs outside. As Jodhka (2012, 13) concludes:

Choosing to live in the village did not imply any kind of commitment to or identification with the village and its ethos. The social order of caste hierarchy is a thing of past and the collective identity of village is nearly completely fragmented.

III.            Exclusionary Urbanization

In contrast to studies which gesture to the emergence of a rural-urban continuum, Kundu (2003, 2009a, 2014) has contended in a series of articles over a decade and more, that urban planning and development in Indian cities are systematically biased against rural migrants, and this limits the absorption capacity and growth potential of urban centres.

Kundu (2009, 55) describes “exclusionary urban growth”, as resulting from a “negative policy perspective on migration and increased unaffordability of land and basic amenities” for rural migrants. It leads to “deceleration in urban growth”. As evidence, Kundu (2014, 545) argues for a “declining trend of urbanisation, based on data on the urban rural growth differential, ie, “the difference between the growth rate of urban population and that in rural population” (p 544). For 2000-05, this URGD was 1%, much below most of Latin America and Africa.  According to Kundu (2014), growing inequality in urban areas may be to blame, noting that state urban poverty levels are not always lower for more prosperous states. This analysis suggests that the new jobs in globalising India are more easily accessed by high skill and better off workers, leaving the large majority of poorer workers behind. Further (p 561), “even short duration migration opportunities in urban areas are being cornered by somewhat better off sections of the population as in case of general migration.Kundu suggests that urban economies as well as governance in India’s metropolises are unfavourable to poorer migrants and instead select for migrants from higher socio-economic status backgrounds. Poor rural migrants face a variety of “informal entry barriers” in the most successful, class I cities, which are in an “exclusionary” and “sanitizing mode” (p 565). For example, the push for infrastructure megaprojects leads to massive displacement of slum populations, yet the politics in these cities remain hostile to the most disadvantaged rural migrants. From a policy perspective, Kundu thus advocates greater investment and support to small and medium towns to help absorb migrants fleeing a declining agrarian sector for non-agricultural employment.

Migrants in the Neoliberal City

“Son-of-the soil” arguments, of the type deployed by the Shiv Sena and MNS in Mumbai, are political tools to deny the migrants’ right to the city. The lack of identifying documents, the inability to vote, missing access to housing serve to deepen this denial. A response to Bhagat’s (2011) question: does the migrant have a Right to the City, comes in a recent collection in the Economic and Political Weekly. Examining the contentions “for resources, space, rights, claims and justice” that mark the neoliberal city, Sammadar (2016, 53) complicates the paradigm of exclusionary urbanisation. According to him, the contradiction of the neoliberal city lies in the fact that the migrant can neither be removed from nor settled in the city.

Characterizing this state as one of “suspended citizenship”, Jha and Kumar’s (2016) contribution illustrates this tension best. On the one hand, rural migrants serve as a cheap source of labour for informal garment units in places like Dharavi in Mumbai’s informal economy. On the other hand, migrants in such scenarios of “vulnerable employment” find themselves rendered homeless. Their dark and dingy workplaces also double up as makeshift homes. The precariousness faced by the homeless is further compounded because migrants’ claim to public space is itself subject to contestation and repudiation by middle-class and elite civil society actors.

Mouleshri Vyas similarly looks at the figure of the elderly security guard. The narratives of the security guards, many of whom have often migrated to Mumbai at a young age, reveal in stark detail how a life of precarity, in jobs without labour protections, compromises the migrants’ long-term prospects, leaving them vulnerable to low paid and exploitative work in the twilight of their lives. Vyas concludes, “the lives of these security guards emphasise the connection between poverty, informal work, and precarity and its persistence across time and generations” (p 83).

According to Samaddar (2016, 53), (construction) transit labour represents the neoliberal city’s “combination of the most virtual and primitive forms of accumulation.” Its iconic image: the countless transit workers who construct new India’s “special economic zones (SEZs), power plants, airports, railway corridors, highways, bridges, new towns and new buildings and houses, flyovers, information and technology parks, and other residential and commercial projects” (Sammadar 2016, 54) who themselves shelter in temporary hovels during close to construction projects, only to be uprooted shortly after the projects are complete. As Samaddar (2016, 54) asserts, “the neo-liberal city in order to be a logistical hub, becomes an extraction site.” The  figure of the migrant embodies the contradictions between the precept and practice of right to the city.

IV.      In Brief

This module has presented studies on a selection of themes from the vast panoply of migration studies. Most important, it is evident that circular forms of labour migration predominate in Indian cities rather than one-way labour mobility from rural to urban.

These patterns of temporariness allow for various forms of circulation along the rural – urban continuum, even though many of these migrants remain in the informal economy, where in the absence of lack of collective action, they face lifetimes of precariousness in the neoliberal Indian city.

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