Labour Law and the Migrant Worker: Research Report.

Abstract

A striking feature of economic development in India is that a major part of the country’s nonagricultural workforce and significant numbers of seasonal workers in agriculture are migrants. The increasing domination of temporary forms of employment, the mismatch between service led growth and low employment generation, the movement of industries out of settled cities into more sparsely populated hinterlands, even as city populations are being expanded as people move urbanwards in search of employment opportunities, the fact that India’s industrial growth in the new century has been principally driven by that most migrant dominated industry - construction, and of course agrarian crisis leading to widespread agrarian distress, have all fuelled mobility and migration, while throwing up new concerns regarding migrant workers’ rights. As such, there is a particular need to critically look at the gamut of labour laws from the perspective of migrants.