Interstate Migrant Workers and Access to Social Security Benefits: A Critical Study

Abstract

According to the latest data, the construction sector is one of the second largest employment generation sectors with 71 million workers’ force and Indian construction workers are listed under the unorganized sector. The Ministry of Labor and Employment launched the e-sharam portal for unorganized sector workers which helps them to get awareness about the social security schemes. It is the first database in India that covers migrant workers, gig workers, construction workers, and migrant workers. However, it is crucial to study the status of social security among migrant construction workers. The main intention of this paper is to understand the status of social security among migrant construction workers in India. The present paper focuses on the latest literature related to social security especially related to migrant workers. The methodology adopted by the researcher is the secondary data. The finding of the study reveals that workers will only know information about social security through the welfare boards, workers who work on sites, and eighty percent of workers are not conscious about social security privileges. Meanwhile, the socioeconomic condition of workers was poor and factors like education level, and monthly income were very poor, the average monthly income was less than five thousand rupees per month. A few prominent studies were conducted on comparative studies comparing their economic status before and after their migration and it was found that the economic condition has improved when they have migrated from their place to some other place for livelihood. Keywords- Social security, Migrant construction workers, Unorganised sector, Socio-economic conditions.