22 Labour Migration: Trends and Implications I

Somyabrata Bagchi

Introduction

Migration is associated with the fundamental aspect of human life including food, shelter, and security. It has a major impact on economic and social situation of a country as it plays an important role in shaping identity, language, religion, and education of a person or a community. The term ‘migration’ refers the movement of a person or people from one place to another. But such movement is different from a casual visit and a tour. In reality it is a “survival instinct that drives humans to seek better prospects” (Sundari, 2005: 2295). The Census of India defines migration in this way ‘When a person is enumerated in census at a different place than his/her place of birth, she/he is considered a migrant’1. It has been reported that in 2010, three percent of the world population migrated outside their country of origin 2. In India marriage is the most common reason for migration among the women. Women too migrate for work though. As a rule, men mostly migrate for work. According to the census report of 2001, the total number of migrated people by place of birth is more than 307 million (29. 9 % of total population) and the number by place of last residence is 314 million (30. 6% of total population) 1.

Migration is of great scholarly interest to students of society and culture. There is plenty of research on processes of migration, causes of migration, adaptation of the migrated people to new locations and settings, and consequences of migration on people and communities concerned. It has been observed that migration has an effect on all areas of human life including economy,health,  marriage, household formation, politics, religion, and communication. Migrated  workers send money or goods to their families. These are known as remittance. Such remittance constitutes a  significant proportion of the global economy and sometimes a considerable portion of a country’s economy. The Times of India, a popular national newspaper, reported on 3rd October

2013 that India received the highest amount of remittance in the world3. The obvious point is that labour migration does not always respect the national boundaries. People, even poor illiterate villagers, go to other countries in search of livelihood. For example, large numbers of Indian labourers migrate to the Gulf countries for work. Punjabi workers are found in large numbers in cheese and bread-making units in Italy. Some of them take on the role of farmers in countries like Canada and Australia. Besides, we have well-trained software professional and managers working in the developed world. In this module, though, we are not concerned about out-country migration that comes under a separate domain of diaspora studies.

In fact, scholars categorize migration into many types. In this module, we primarily focus on the migration of rural workers. The Census of India (2001) has reported that more than 73 million rural people migrate to another urban and rural area. The share of rural to rural migration (53 million) is quite higher than that of rural to urban migration (20 million) 1.

Types of Migration

Migration can be classified into two types on the basis of political boundaries. Broadly, they are internal migration, and international migration. Internal migration denotes movement of a person or people within the boundaries of a country or the nation-state. For example, if a person moves from West Bengal to Delhi, it would be internal migration. On the other hand, many people from Nepal come to India in search of jobs. This is an example of international migration as they move across national boundaries. Scholars such as Levitt (2002, 2007), Dannecker (2005), and Miller (2011) have talked about another type of migration called transnational migration in which people move to two or more countries but keep various kinds of ties with their homelands, and thus create a new cultural identity.

By the turn of twentieth century, rural to urban migration became pronounced in many countries including India (Mehra et al, 2014: 24). It is mainly because of availability of work in urban areas. Rural poor labourers are given legal contracts to work for a specific period of time in some distant places. They migrate to those places for works but they do not have any intention to live there permanently. This type of migration is called wage-labour migration.Figure 2: Rural labours move towards the city

International migration became prominent mainly after the Second World War, and again in the mid-1980s. People migrate internationally mostly because of work related reasons. Since the last quarterof the twentieth century, a substantial number of skilled young men and women have migrated to the United States, Canada, and Australia and other countries of the global North. This trend not only continues in the twenty-first century but has also gathered momentum in the wake of globalization.

But then people also migrate under duress. Natural and man-made calamities such as famine, civil and ethnic wars, and outbreak of fatal diseases lead to displacement of people. For instance, apart from the United States, Canada, and Australia, a large number of Turkish people went to Germany in the last part of the twentieth century. On the other hand, many Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish people have taken refuge in Turkey. When people are forced to migrate, they are called displaced persons. Evidently, such displacements are primarily caused by war, natural disaster, construction of dam, and colonialism. A large number of displaced persons are refugees. According to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) (2014), 51. 2 million people in the world are refugees 5. When people are coerced to migrate for development purposes, the migration is called development-induced displacement. It has been reported that approximately 80 million people have been displaced since 1950s due to constructions of dams alone6. In India, the construction of high dams in Narmada river valley has displaced 1. 5million people from their land7.

Transnational laborers move one place to another depending on the demand for their labour. Many women, mostly Asian women, are working abroad. Large number of Sri Lankan and Filipino women work as domestic help in the Gulf countries. Vietnamese women go to South Korea to work as nannies. The International Labour Migration Report has noted that that “today women represent around half of the total population of international migrants worldwide”4. The migrated women workers are mainly engaged in nursing, teaching, and domestic services. In cities, many migrant women work as household help. They have their permanent homes in rural areas. They send their remittances to their families back in the villages. Once or twice in a year, they visit home to meet their family members. This type of labour movement is termed as circular migration. In temporary or circular migration, workers move to their destination place for a limited period of time, and after accomplishing their works they return to their homesteads (Keshri and Bhagat 2012:81). For the last four decades or so, Bihari labourers have been going to the Green Revolution areas of Punjab and Haryana during peak agricultural season. Once they complete their tasks there, they return home, and the cycle goes on and on. This is also known as seasonal or spontaneous migration. Regional disparities, uneven development, and decline of agricultural sectors push poor rural people of many Asian countries in temporary migration. Scholars like Brauw (2007), Deshingkar and Akter (2009), and Deshingkar and Grimm (2005) have noted that the rate of temporary migration has increased in the last two decades in South, South-East and East Asia (cited in Keshari and Bhagat, 2012: 81). Temporary or seasonal migration has long been an alternative source of income and survival strategy for the rural poor. It has been estimated that in 1999-2001 approximately 9. 3% of rural workforce across the country undertook seasonal migration (Gairikpati, 2008: 633). Such migration has significant implications for the functioning oflabour markets in both rural and urban areas.In terms of temporality, generally scholars talk of two types of migration: long range and seasonal or periodic. The former type of migration is due to certain conjuncture of historical circumstances for which one can only point the trend and not the precise date. For example, Goans’ migration to East Africa in the early twentieth century or the Goans’ migration to Mumbai in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth century will fall under this category. One can also refer to the long range migration of some of the tribal groups from the Santhal Paragana plateau to the tea gardens in Assam and Doors in this category.

The season or periodic migration is informed by a different rhythm of temporality where people migrate at a given time with clear purpose of returning to their places of origin sooner than later. Large number of tribal groups from Odisha migrates seasonally to work in brick kilns in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Likewise, some groups from Kerala seasonally migrate to Gujarat to work in shrimp farming. You should note that circular, short-term, cyclical, oscillatory, temporary and spontaneous migrations are some of the other terms used in the literature. In essence, it connotes a particular form of mobility of labour based on the uneven demand for labour in agriculture. Agricultural activities are generally indexed to the high demand of labour during peak period and the low demand for labour during the slack season.

It is generally believed that much of rural to urban labour migration is seasonal in nature. Very often, once the Kharif harvest is over, scores of rural labourers migrate to other villages and towns for a certain period of time. In the literature, we routinely come across certain categories of seasonal migrants such as the Haveli workers from Mandla (Madhya Pradesh), sugarcane cutters from Medak district (Telengana), earth workers from Chittor district (Andhra Pradesh), and rice planters from Puruliya(West Bengal) (Rogaly 2003).

Causes of rural labour migration

Labour migration is one of the well-studied subjects in the social sciences. Scholars have looked at different aspects of labour migration from different perspectives such as the Dual economy model (Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan, 2003: 350) and the Marxist model (Mosse et al, 2002: 59). According to the dual economy model, labourers migrate from rural or traditional lower paid sectors to the industrialized higher paid sectors in the hope of getting better wages.But the industrial areas have limited capacity to

surplus agricultural labourers. As the point of saturation reaches in the industrial market, wages begin to decline and the migrant workers begin to compete among themselves to get jobs. On the other hand, Marxist model emphasized structural changes as the cause of labour migration instead of giving too much importance to the migrant’s agency. Rural labour forces are pumped into urban areas to enable the employers to exploit the available surplus labour in non-agricultural sectors as a consequence of structural changes in the economy. It results into rural to urban migration in many countries including India (Mehra et al, 2014: 24). It is mainly because of the availability of work in urban areas. In this context, the push-pull theory of labour migration argues that the rural traditional economy fails to support population growth and increasing demand concerning the quality of life. In such a situation, cities lure people by providing them with employment opportunities. Therefore, the evident lack of opportunities in the rural areas is the push factor whereas the availability of work in urban areas is the pull factor. The rural labourers assess costs and benefits of rural versus urban life and then decide to migrate to urban areas. Sometimes, rural poor labourers are given legal contracts to work for a specific period of time in some distant places. Besides, demographic pressure, scarcity of natural resources such as water, forest materials, declining agricultural production, natural disasters including drought (Sundari, 2005: 2295), and flood (Rafique, 2003: 943) are some of the factors abetting labour migration. In some quarters, migrant labourers are also termed as ‘ecological refugees’ [Gadgil and Guha, 1995: 4]. However, Mosse et al (2002) are of opinion that ecological crisis or subsistence failures are not the only causes of migration. Migration is also a function of existing social relations including debt burden and socioeconomic dependency on others in the countryside. They view labour migration in two ways. From one point of view, it is a forced livelihood response, and in other ways, it also provides a positive opportunity to earn more, save, invest, and create assets (Mosse et al, 2002: 60). Rural people take loans from local money lenders mostly for expenses on life cycle rituals, agricultural and medical emergencies. They are charged very high, almost usurious, rate of interest. Income from the subsistence agriculture or wages is never enough for the repayment. So, as a rule, after the harvest season is over, large score of villagers are forced to migrate in search of jobs in the urban informal economy. The agents, that is, labour contractors also called sardars and mukadams, give them money on advance. As they have no alternative livelihood option, they agree to work in distant places as casual cheap labourers.

Sure enough, temporary or seasonal migration has been an alternative source of income and survival strategy for the rural poor for long. In general, rural poor migrate to the cities and crowd in construction projects or in informal sectors. The landless labourers who are entrapped in debt go to places far and near to earn some additional money. Brauw (2007) argues that low income households are more susceptible to migration than others (cited in Keshri et al 2012: 82). Also, temporary migration is high in those states where inequality is more pronounced (Keshri et al, 2012: 82). The School of New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) considers temporary migration as a risk diversification strategy of the poor people (Keshri et al, 2012: 81). Viewed thus, seasonal migration is not always weather determined. Instead, it is best seen as a routine activity that continues across generations (Gairikpati, 2008: 633). It has been estimated that, in 1999-2001, approximately 9. 3% of rural workforce across the country undertook seasonal migration (ibid, 2008: 633).

igrantlabourers get jobs in three different ways. First, through local contractors who organize the potential and willing villagers and give cash on advance. Second, people use their social networks, friends, relatives and other support systems to get jobs during the lean agricultural season. Third, many people work as daily wage earners on their own in urban casual labour markets. There is a well-organized informal system of labour contract characterizing seasonal migration. In some parts of South India, it is called ‘Palamur contract system’ (ibid, 2008: 636) whereas in the eastern part of India it is known as ‘dadan’ (Government of NCT of Delhi). In village areas, there are some local labour contractors. They are local money lenders, or they work in close connection with the moneylenders. They are given commissions from bigger contractors to organizelabourers. They offer job contracts in distant places depending on the demand for labour with a sum of cash on advance to the potential workers. People who take loans from money lenders are also forced to sign up the contracts. Local contractors take the advantage of their distress condition to maximize their commissions. Apart from this, rural workers are also willing to migrate because wages outside the villages are much better than the local wages. The wages are determined through negotiation between the labourers and contractors and the rate also depends on the personal skill of the workers. You can view this multi-media presentation to get an informed idea of the reasons behind labour migration.

In fact, agrarian distress turns out to be the key theme in scholarly discussions on causes for rural labour migration. It is commonly believed that agriculture as such is no longer an activity that can assure dignified livelihood to the majority of the villagers. Fragmentation of land holdings due to demographic pressures, the monsoon-dependent nature of irrigation, lack of public investment in irrigation and agricultural infrastructure besides floods, droughts etc. have rendered agriculture an unprofitable economic activity to a large extent. In those areas where cash crops are grown, the increasing dependence on markets and the heavy investment on credit for new types of seeds, fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides have given rise to a cycle of indebtedness in cases of crop failure leading to the phenomenon of farmers’ suicides.

In a way, Indian agriculture suffers from two types of vulnerabilities –nature-related and market-induced vulnerabilities. The cumulative outcome is the decreasing capacity of agriculture to be the hold-all sector for the employment of the available rural labour. As a consequence, the villagers are forced to eke out a living through migration. In general, migrants are poverty- stricken and severely indebted owing to the acute agricultural crisis that pervades Indian economy, in particular since the introduction of economic reforms in the early 1990s. Given the rise of rural non-farm employment, agriculture is becoming a less important source of livelihood even in rural areas. The symmetry between the village and the agriculture is getting disrupted as more and more villagers join the reserve army of labour in the urban informal sector. Today, a growing number of villagers earn their living from non-farm based economic activities.

Conditions of the rural migrant labourers

Migrant labourers are mostly unskilled. According to a report published in The Economist (23 February 2015), an influential global weekly, almost 70 per cent of the working age population in India does not have more than primary education. Given such abysmally low level of skill sets, it is no surprise that majority of the migrant workers are employed as casual, and low paid workers. They are largely employed in construction works, brick making, carrying heavy loads, stone breaking, digging, and many other types of manual works. They also frequently change their jobs. Over time, they gradually become semi-skilled and skilled labourers such as masons, plumbers, electricians, fitters, mechanics and even labour contractors. The employers prefer migrant labourers to local labourers because the wage rate of the migrated labourers is generally less than that of the local labourers. So they send agents in villages to organize cheap labourers for a certain period of time. Mosse et al (2002) provide an instance. If the wage rate of a local labour is 60 rupees per day, the wage rate of a migrantlabour would be 40-45 rupees per day (Mosse et al, 2002: 68). In addition to this, they work for longer hours as they mostly stay in or near the construction sites. It provides flexibility of working hours from the employers’ point of view. Also, there arelittle chances of absenteeism, and consequently, assured labour supply.

We should not think that all migrants are poor. In fact, migrant labourers can be classified into two types depending on their economic background. First, there are migrants who come from economically better-off families. They do not have subsistence failure or food scarcity. They cover short distance for a shorter period of time. Young male members of such families generally migrate whereas women and the aged kinsmen maintain farm and other domestic activity. In contrast, large numbers of migrant labourers are poor. They move long distances for longer period of time with their families. The poor people generally migrate with their family members in order to increase the productivity of their labour power [Breman, 1996: 45].

Figure 6: a migrant child working with his parents

Figure 7: Migrants at Work

The income of the migrant labourers depends on several factors such as period of migration, location, type of work, advances taken, transportation and living costs. The wage rates of men and women sometimes vary too. The working conditions of the migrant labourers are dreadful to say the least. Men and women work in the same site but they have different tasks. For example, men are breaking stones whereas women are carrying and transporting those stones from one place to another. Their performances are closely monitored. Mosse et al (2002) observes that in a construction site woman labourers are given a target to carry 400 head-load stones per day. They are given a token after each successful transfer of loads. If they fail to fulfil their target, their wages are reduced proportionately. The mostly stay in their work-sites. The environment of those places particularly of quarries, brick-kilns, and

factories are not safe. They are not provided proper safety measures against risky equipment, chemicals, or poisonous gases. They lead their lives on a poor diet. They largely reside in open spaces. Sometimes they get shelters in unfinished buildings, or sometimes they make temporary tents with torn plastic sheets. They lack the access to some of the basic utilities like toilets, potable water, and basic health care and education facilities for their children. As a result, most of the migrant labourers suffer from serious health hazards (Allotey 2003: 7). Employers offer little compensation in case of harsh injury or death. Workers are rarely paid medical expenses. They have to bear the costs of medical treatment out of their meagre savings which generally put them in another spiral of indebtedness. In urban areas, firewood which they use as cooking fuel is expensive. In bivouac, there is no security for their personal belongings. If they find a safe place to stay, they agree to walk long hours for work. Many labourers bring food grains from their homes because in unknown urban areas, food may be expensive. Apart from the toilsome jobs, they face humiliation, and social isolation in equal measure. In particular, tribal migrant workers are perceived as ill washed, uneducated, and ‘uncivilized’ (Mosse et al, 2002: 77). The migrant women labourers continue their domestic and reproductive roles together with wage labour. The women labourers suffer from pregnancy complications, and miscarriages. ‘Child care is always a problem for poor migrant families’ (ibid. 2002: 78). Some migrant families bring an older child with them to look after the infants. Usually, parents fetch their children in the worksites. The children spend a considerable period of their grown up phase in the work sites. Over the years, they become familiar with the works and begin to work with their parents. They are deprived of schooling.

The migrant workers in the informal sectors are devoid of any sort of legal protection. It is not the legislations do not exist. Indeed, there are legislations such as the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1975, the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Equal Remuneration Act for Women 1976, the Construction Workers’ Act 1996, the Inter State Migrant Workman Act 1979. It is also not that the government labourofficers are not well aware about the difficulty of migrant labourers. But then theyalways have often a favourable disposition towards the employers (Mosse et al 2002: 79). The Registers of the labourers are not maintained properly. The government inspectors rarely monitor such negligence. The migrant workers who are employed in the informal sectors do not have any proper record of service. It disempowers them from seeking any legal protection in case such need arises. After all, the asymmetries of power existing between the employers and the migrant labourers are guarantee enough against any serious pursuit of legal redressal on the part of the migrants.

In Brief

Be that as it may, there is no denying that migration is an inevitable part of the modern narratives of rural-agricultural labour. Looking at seasonal migration as a dynamic socio-political process of labour movement, Alpa Shah (2006) urges us to look beyond economic determinants for a sound understanding of migration. According to her, migration also entails varieties of social freedom – freedom from the oppressive structures of joint family, the village community and the prevalent caste-based norms. Also, migrants have an agency to choose such freedoms. For her, everything about migration is not just about of a narrative of exploitation and expropriation. It is time we wrote another narrative of freedom into it. She considers the liberating possibility of the development of new liaisons among migrants and contrasts that to the inhibiting ambience of the village. Likewise, some other scholarstoo view migration-induced labour circulation as a process that leads to an environment of rural cosmopolitanism which enables people to break with the conventional spaces of work, and provides them with new possibilities. In the next module that is in 4. 4 B we will examine some of these issues in greater detail. The next module will also give you a peep into the lives and livelihoods of rural agricultural women migrants. Indeed, there is large number of field-based studies yielding great insights into the nature of seasonal migration. Yet, it is difficult to generalize about the nature, characteristics and dynamics of migration across states and regions. However, some migrant groups remain itched in our memory. For example, Rogaly’s 1995 work tells us about the Khandeshi migrants working in sugarcane harvesting in Gujarat and about the nature of migrants work in Rayalseema district in Andhra Pradesh. Likewise, we know a lot about the lives of those Nepali migrants who work in apple orchards in Himachal Pradesh. In any case, since the Module 4. 4 B is the continuation of this module you will find all the references used in this module there.

Extensive research on migration has made certain things part of our received wisdom. For instance, we know that Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal are some of the states sending higher number of migrants to other states. Likewise, destinations for the migrant labourers too keep on changing depending on many factors, namely, wage rates, peaceful working conditions, better law and order, pre-existing kin and village networks. For example, Bihari labourers were earlier migrating to the Easternparts of the country (what they would call purabmeaning thereby states of West Bengal, Assam and the north-eastern states. However, after the 1970s, the Bihari labourers started migrating in droves to Punjab, Haryana and the western Uttar Pradesh. Whereas the West Bengal saw an industrial decline and lost much of its charm as an economic hub, the north-eastern states turned out to be unsafe for the Biharis owing to the growing ethnic politics there. As a consequence, Bihari workers have found other destinations such as Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Kerala and Tamil Nadu more attractive in the last decade or so.

Web links and interesting facts/points to ponder

Some of you may like to visit the following website to know more about labour-related issues:

www. vvgnli. org