TY - JOUR
T1 - Destinations matter
T2 - Social policy and migrant workers in the times of Covid
AU - Rao, Nitya
AU - Narain, Nivedita
AU - Chakraborty, Shuvajit
AU - Bhanjdeo, Arundhita
AU - Pattnaik, Ayesha
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge funding support for the collection of data for this paper from BBSRC grant BB/P027970/1 for the project ‘Transforming India’s Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable Food Supplies’ and the linked EPSRC Global Research Translation Award EP/T015411/1UKRI entitled ‘Meeting the SDGs’. We wish to thank our respondents, both in the village and those stranded, for speaking to us in these difficult times. We have secured ethics approval, and followed the protocols of consent, anonymity and confidentiality of all respondents. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/10/27
Y1 - 2020/10/27
N2 - The national lockdown of India announced on March 24th 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, left millions of migrant labourers stranded in their destinations. Thrown out of their informal labour arrangements in cities and industrial centres, unable to return to their villages in the absence of transportation, they were stranded for over a month with no income, improper housing and often lack of food. This paper discusses the experiences of men migrating from Chakai block, Jamui district, Bihar, to four Indian states, namely, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. We compare their experiences across these four destination states in relation to the social policy response following the national lockdown. Most workers are young men (16–35 years old) and their migration pattern is seasonal and circular. The emerging lessons provide inputs for social policy measures related to migrant workers in India.
AB - The national lockdown of India announced on March 24th 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, left millions of migrant labourers stranded in their destinations. Thrown out of their informal labour arrangements in cities and industrial centres, unable to return to their villages in the absence of transportation, they were stranded for over a month with no income, improper housing and often lack of food. This paper discusses the experiences of men migrating from Chakai block, Jamui district, Bihar, to four Indian states, namely, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. We compare their experiences across these four destination states in relation to the social policy response following the national lockdown. Most workers are young men (16–35 years old) and their migration pattern is seasonal and circular. The emerging lessons provide inputs for social policy measures related to migrant workers in India.
KW - Citizenship
KW - India
KW - Social protection
KW - Stranded migrants
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85093976781&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1057/s41287-020-00326-4
DO - 10.1057/s41287-020-00326-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 33132542
AN - SCOPUS:85093976781
VL - 32
SP - 1639
EP - 1661
JO - European Journal of Development Research
JF - European Journal of Development Research
SN - 0957-8811
IS - 5
ER -
