Inter-state Labor Migration in India: The Normal and Reverse Phase

Abstract

AbstractThe novel coronavirus has started spreading from Wuhan city of mainland China in December 2019, and it spread out over several countries throughout the world. To stop the spread of this virus, the Indian Government has announced for countrywide lockdown. It has a significant impact on the Indian economy, especially in the unorganized sector. The workers of this sector, especially the migrant workers, are the worst affected section of our society. The present study tries to explore the socioeconomic shock of this crisis on interstate migrant workers. We have divided the whole discussion into two major parts. The first one is the pre-pandemic situation of interstate migration in the country and the second one is the pandemic situation. For the first one, as there is no accurate data on migrant workers countrywide, we have considered the D3 series data of the Census of India 2011. Whereas, for the second one, various study reports and news reports have been analyzed. It is revealed that migrants were going toward high developed states from the low developed states during the pre-pandemic situation. However, the pandemic shock changed the direction of migration; a reverse migration was witnessed toward their native places. This chapter brings to fore the forces of detracton at the Indian megacities, which acted as the push factors; the challenging phase of transit from cities to native villages; and the graved scenario of social stigmatization over migrants workforce in their “homeland.”KeywordsMigrationSpatial patternUnemploymentCOVID-19 crisisStigmaJoblessness