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#MeTooMigrant trend creates a dangerous false equivalency b/w circular, footloose & socially excluded migrant workers & migration by privileged sections of the population. It is symptomatic of the same structural inequalities which have precipitated the current crisis. Thread:
Footloose & circular migrants are represented by those who are pushed out of their villages due to landlessness & impoverishment. This poverty is not natural but engineered by the capture of their land, water and forest based resources by rural elites and corporations
Those who end up in cities as wage dependent workers are from the most socially marginalised groups - Adivasis, Dalits, religious minorities, and women & children from these groups, whose conditions do not improve after migration for work & employment: http://bit.ly/unlockingtheurban
They end up in lowest ends of labour markets & have to accept work for very adverse terms & conditions - their caste, gender and ethnic based stigmatization & conditions of poverty are reproduced in the labour markets where they work: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13552074.2019.1576308
They are excluded from cities, politically, socially & culturally - not considered urban citizens but dirty, criminals & undesirable even tho work in its major industries. Very unlike migrations by privileged classes who integrate into urban society
https://thewire.in/economy/housing-for-all-migrant-workers
https://thewire.in/economy/housing-for-all-migrant-workers
Our research shows that Adivasi & Dalit workers are unable to settle in cities or achieve vertical mobility in its labour markets - poverty wages, deplorable living conditions conditions, no savings or investments in health or education is common: https://www.indiaspend.com/why-the-new-wage-code-will-push-migrant-workers-deeper-into-poverty/
This means that even across generations, these groups are forced to carry out the same unsafe & devalued labour, with no escape out of this vicious circle perpetrated by capitalist urban models which use gender & caste based inequalities to enable economic growth.
