Coping with Cities and Connecting with Villages: Migrant Workers in Surat City

Abstract

A big share of migrant workers comes to cities from ‘depressed’ rural as well as urban regions in search of work. Large parts of rural areas in the countryside have been experiencing diminishing returns from agriculture and allied occupations triggering such migration that is often facilitated through ‘kith-kin-peer’ networks. Their overwhelming presence and jostling for space frequently make most labour markets in cities as supply driven abodes of employment and income seekers. And yet the manner(s) in which they deal and negotiate with urban labour markets and respond to works that they try to undertake depend upon nature and type of households and resource base at the origin as well as destination points. Through a case study of Surat city in the state of Gujarat, India, this paper deals with the ways in which such migrant workers enter urban labour markets, their employment and job situations, wages and benefits, earnings and expenses, indebtedness and savings, and the manner(s) in which they remain socially and economically connected with their native homes.