INDIA
India is an important country in the international migration processes on the global scale. It functions simultaneously as a country of origin, transit and destination, thus constituting an overlapping “hub” and “hinterland” of migration. India has the largest number of emigrants in the world and is the top receiving country for remittances. It is part of several of the top twenty South-South migration corridors, as source country (India-United Arab Emirates, India-Saudi Arabia, India-Pakistan, India-Oman and India-Kuwait) and destination country (Bangladesh-India and Pakistan-India). Using the UN DESA statistics for 2015, a recent report has noted that India was the destination and source country correspondingly for 52% and 27% of the total cross-border or intra-regional migrations in South Asia.
RESEARCH on INDIA
MiFOOD PAPERS
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Urban Food (In)security and the Role of Migrant Informal Food Waste Recyclers in Delhi
Urban food systems in developing countries like India are rife with inequalities that preclude food security for all. In this context, the paper examines the role played by informal workers in the ‘circular economy’ for food in improving the accessibility of food and urban food security in Delhi, India. Evidence from an informal street market close to one of the country's largest urban wholesale markets of food grains, pulses and spices in Delhi reveals rare details of how urban food ...
Rural-urban Transition and Food Security in India
As a growing proportion of world's population lives in cities and towns, food security is increasingly acquiring an urban character. The locus of food security research and policy agendas has correspondingly expanded from rural areas to include urban centres in recent years. However, the dominant discourse on urbanization-food security relationship appears to be shaped by perspectives from the Global North and large cities, and disregards urbanization-food security nexus in small towns of the Global South. This paper aims to correct this bias. With a focus on India where ...
Food Security Among Female Migrant Workers in Kerala Returning from the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries
This paper seeks to enhance our comprehension of the interplay between COVID-19, international labour migration, and food security. The primary objective is to discern food security characteristics among female migrant workers (FMWs) returning to Kerala from Gulf countries, particularly under heightened social and economic uncertainties shared with male migrant workers (MMWs). This study conducted in the state of Kerala, India, examines the food security perceptions of Gulf migrants using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). Samples of both returning FMWs and MMWs were identified through snowball sampling from ...
COVID-19, Internal Transitions and Vulnerable Citizens: Narratives of the Migrant Crisis in India during the Pandemic
This article illustrates how the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to an internal migrant crisis in India, making the country realise the presence of physical borders within itself. Through a narrative analysis of the chronicles of internal migrant workers and the migrant crisis published in print media during the first wave of COVID-19, this article elucidates how internal borders within a country became impermeable, affecting the rights and well-being of vulnerable citizens, who were labelled ‘disease carriers’. The ...
Re-emerging from a Hiatus: Migrants and Migration in a Post-Pandemic World
In my last editorial as the editor-in-chief of Migration and Development, titled “Migration at a Crossroads: COVID-19 and Challenges to Migration”, I wondered what the world of migration and migration corridors would look like after the world recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic (Rajan, 2020). I was confident that migration as a phenomenon would endure, as it is such an important part of the human experience and existence. However, what were less clear were the forms and the intensity with which ...
The Last Straw? Experiences and Future Plans of Returned Migrants in the India-GCC Corridor
In this article, we explore how precise information about migrants' working conditions in their destination countries impacts their decision to migrate again upon returning home. Using household data from Kerala and Tamil Nadu from 2020–21, we study return emigrants (REM) who returned during the first COVID-19 lockdowns in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Through a binary choice model, we discover that negative experiences in the destination country significantly influence the decision to re-migrate. Specifically, issues with salary payment and ...
RESEARCH PROJECTS
“Little Pockets of Happiness”: Nepali Migrants and Momos Informal Enterprises in New Delhi, India
This research project will examine these momo economies by documenting the role and participation of Tibetan and Nepali migrants in the informal food economies of momo production, distribution, and retailing in India’s capital city. My preliminary desktop-centred research has confirmed that the refugee/migrant momo food economy is diversified both geographically and in terms of its operations. The distinctive arrangements and contours of the momo food-work operations in this city, organised by these two migrant communities, will be studied using these ...
IPaSS: Informality, Inclusive Growth and Food Security in Cities of the Global South
This foundation project of the Hungry Cities Partnership is funded by the SSHRC and IDRC under the International Partnerships for Sustainable Societies Program (IPaSS). The project has facilitated the formation of an initial seven-city research and policy network across the Global South linked to researchers at five Canadian universities. The project has embarked on a five-year program of collaborative research on a variety of themes related to inclusive growth and the formal and informal urban food system in the study ...
Food Security at Emerging Urban Spaces in India
An examination of the important public policy issue of contemporary significance of linkages between migration, urbanization and food and nutrition security in India, within the wider context of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The paper responds to the call by Crush (2013, p. 62) to bridge the “massive institutional and substantive disconnect” that currently exists between the two prominent development agendas of migration and food security. The geographic focus of this paper is on the lower echelons of India’s ...
BOOK CHAPTER
Tracing the Links Between Migration and Food Security in Bangladesh
Mohammad Moniruzzaman & Margaret Walton-Roberts • This chapter reports results from a household survey conducted in 2014-15 in four villages of two sub-districts in Bangladesh to assess the effect of international remittance on household food security through the use of multiple outcome indicators. The burden of household food insecurity in developing countries is a central development and welfare concern, and it is important to assess how international remittances might improve household food security. The results indicate that migrant remittances contribute to ...
Impact of COVID-19 on Women Migrant Workers: Case of Domestic Workers in the South Asia-Gulf Corridor
S Irudaya Rajan & Rakkee Thimothy • The chapter examines the impact of COVID-19 on low skilled women migrant workers by taking up the case of domestic workers from South Asia to the Gulf. The chapter builds on the extensive literature on the vulnerabilities faced by women migrant domestic workers and presents evidence of their extreme vulnerability during COVID-19. Their situation is made worse by the paternalistic attitude of the sending countries to protect women migrant domestic workers. At the ...
The Long Walk Towards Uncertainty: The Migrant Dilemma in Times of COVID-19
S. Irudaya Rajan, Renjini Rajagopalan and P. Sivakumar • The onslaught of COVID-19 thrust upon humanity two major challenges, that of human health and that of the economy; the migrants are mired in both. It has both pushed the world economic order into chaos and challenged even the mightiest of economies. The initial advent of COVID-19 sowed confusion within systems of governance as countries struggled to deal with its unprecedented threat. The pandemic has both exposed the magnitude of India’s dependency ...
THESES
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