Navigating Precarity: Indian Migrant Workers in the Gulf Labour Markets

This study delves into the precarious experiences of Indian migrant workers in the Gulf labour markets, focusing on emerging trends from North and East India. It explores how recruitment intermediaries—ranging from formal agencies to informal brokers—shape, mediate, and commodify cross-border labour migration. Drawing on detailed interviews with low-wage migrants (n=10), the study underscores that the migration process is not merely a linear trajectory between two points but a multifaceted space of mediation (Xiang & Lindquist, 2014), where actors such as recruitment agencies, brokers and migrants themselves interact within increasingly decentralised labour markets (Lindquist et al., 2012)

Central to the analysis is the concept of "infrastructure from below," which refers to the informal networks, temporary space, and platforms that Gulf migrants actively cultivate during their migration process and use to navigate the labour markets. Gulf labour migrants, mediated by brokers and state-outsourced migration governance, are frequently trapped in cycles of debt and dependency (Babar & Gardner, 2016; Valenta, 2020) reflecting power imbalances between sending and receiving countries.

The Emigration Act of 1983 and subsequent regulations aimed to protect migrants inadequately address precarious recruitment practices and labour conditions in destination countries. This study highlights how these structural weaknesses perpetuate vulnerability, with migrants subject to inconsistent medical testing, visa irregularities, skill mismatches, and limited legal protections.

Despite these challenges, low-wage Indian migrants exhibit resilience through their use of informal infrastructures to resist marginalisation and commodification. This aligns with the growing discourse around the "infrastructuring process" (Khan, 2019; Lin et al., 2017), where migrants actively shape their own mobility within complex operational systems. The study calls for a nuanced understanding of migration infrastructure that considers not only the regulatory and commercial dimensions but also the agency of migrants as they co-create infrastructures that support their survival in precarious environments.