Health Beyond Borders: Migration and Precarity in South Asia

Abstract

AbstractMigration patterns in South Asia are defined by temporary migration of low-wage labourers within and across national borders. The conditions in which migrants move, live and work expose them to multiple health risks that cause chronic ailments, mental health problems, and increase their susceptibility to airborne and waterborne diseases. Despite this, public policies and mainstream discourses in the region overlook migrants’ health needs or tend to pathologize them as carriers of infectious diseases. In this chapter, we take stock of the regional evidence on migrants’ health, presenting an overview of their health and the underlying social and structural determinants. In reviewing this evidence, we identify the high-risk and disempowering conditions in which they work, the transient nature of their lives and livelihoods, and the intersecting inequalities they face based on distinct aspects of their social location. Together, these conditions, identities and social locations produce distinct yet inter-related and interlocking oppressive states of insecurity, disempowerment, dispossession, exclusion and disposability, locking migrants in a continuing cycle of poverty and ill-health.