Description
This book reconceptualizes migration studies in India and brings back the idea of citizenship to the center of the contested relationship between the state and internal migrants in the country. It interrogates the multiple vulnerabilities of disenfranchised internal migrants as evidenced in the mass exodus of migrants during the COVID-19 crisis. Challenging dominant economic and demographic theories of mobility and relying on a wide range of innovative heterodox methodologies, this volume points to the possibility of reimagining migrants as ‘citizens’.
The volume discusses various facets of internal migration such as the roles of gender, ethnicity, caste, electoral participation of the internal migrants, livelihood diversification, struggle for settlement, and politics of displacement, and highlights the case of temporary, seasonal, and circulatory migrants as the most exploited and invisible group among migrants. Presenting secondary and recent field data from across regions, including from the northeast, the book explores the processes under which people migrate and suggests ways for ameliorating the conditions of migrants through sustained civic and political action.
This book will be essential for scholars and researchers of migration studies, politics, governance, development studies, public policy, sociology, and gender studies as well as policymakers, government bodies, civil society, and interested general readers.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Nasim Zaidi
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Internal Migration and Citizenship in India: An Emerging Perspective
R.B. Bhagat and Ashwani Kumar
Part I. Migrants and Citizenship
2. Why Do Migrants Remain Excluded in Present-Day India and What Should We Do About it?
Priya Deshingkar
3. Migration and Right to the City: A Gender Perspective
R.B. Bhagat
Part II. Migrants and Electoral Politics
4. Migration and Inclusive Elections
Ashwani Kumar and Shashwat Dhar
5. Electoral Participation in India’s Metropolitan Cities
Sanjay Kumar and Souradeep Banerjee
6. Inclusive Exclusions: Citizenship Practices and Circular Migrants in India after 1989
Indrajit Roy
7. Indigene, Outsider and the Citizen: Politics of Migration in Assam
Smitana Saikia and Ravindra Chowdhary
8. Migrant Voters and Political Parties: Notes on an Analytical Framework
E. Sridharan
Part III. Migrants, Development and Social Change
9. Livelihood Diversification and Out-migration: An Appraisal of Rural Bihar
Nandan Kumar and R.B. Bhagat
10. Domestic Migration and Multiple Deprivations: Cycle Rickshaw-Pullers in Delhi
Naresh Kumar
11. Unpacking Women’s Associational Migration in India: Theory and Evidence
Sandhya Iyer and Ananya Chakraborty
12. Role of Caste in Migration: Some Observations from Beed District, Maharashtra
Kalyani Vartak
13. Struggle for Settlement: The Case of Nomadic Dombari Community in Aurangabad District, Maharashtra
Pravin Shankarrao Khandagale
14. Migration and the Politics of Citizenship: An Ethnography at the Borderlands of Rajasthan
Srishtee Sethi
Epilogue: Migrants, Memories and Mythologies
Ashwani Kumar
Index
