Caste Dynamics of Internal Migration in India – Studies from West Bengal

Internal migration in India is rooted in the agricultural transformation and has an inherent caste-based stratification. While upper-caste skilled migrants comprise the affluent urban middle class, lower-caste unskilled informal labourers come to the city, often permanently or seasonally, as daily-wage-based non-farm workers, primarily catering to the development needs of the former groups. Additionally, the decline of employment opportunities in agricultural work resulted in rural distress and caused large-scale rural-to-urban migration.

Against this political-economic backdrop, declining farm-based employment in West Bengal has jeopardized the livelihood of the daily wage-based agricultural workers belonging to mainly lower caste groups. Calcutta, the capital city of British India, attracted migrants to its industrial suburbs and absorbed the seasonal agricultural workers who were finding non-farm jobs. However, during the post-independence era, industrial stagnation in the state dovetailed with agricultural decline, and political unrest resulted in unemployment problems. Consequently, the first wave of out-migration started when socio-economically dominant upper-caste Bengalis began to leave the state to find better work opportunities. Later, the lack of opportunities in agriculture pushed the former agricultural workers to migrate to informal non-farm sectors that were developing in more industrialized states. This has transformed West Bengal from a migrants’ ‘destination’ to a migrant-sending state. Literature shows that since the 2000s, out-migration in the state has surpassed in-migration. In 2023, approximately 21 lakh labourers migrated, making it India's fourth-largest migrant-sending state.

Following the MDR framework, this paper attempts to explain how historically embedded and hierarchically structured caste dynamics in the context of changing economic and social activities have shaped the inequalities in the new migration regime of the state. Through qualitative interviews with precarious lower-caste migrants and their families from the three backward districts, it shows the development of a resilient arrangement of governmentality amidst the development of a ‘migrant-sending’ state.