Internal labour migration is an overwhelming reality that underscores India’s developmental landscape. While migration opens up new vistas of work and employment for millions of people on the move, creating new opportunities for many, it also pushes people into unequal and highly exploitative work regimes. On one hand, migration gives people an exit from issues that ail a rural society (such as agrarian distress and caste violence), but on the other, migration reconfigures its own methods of exploitation. The recent pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of migrants’ lives even further, questioning their belongingness to the city where many have spent several years.

In such a scenario, what has migration meant to the migrants themselves? What do different patterns of labour migration really tell us about the changing nature of work and about migration itself? Can rapid urbanization and the growth of cities become a beacon of hope for migrant workers? What can one say about the distressed condition of rural and agricultural areas in the country, and their role in spurring the exodus from India’s countryside? What is the nature of the impact of migration on rural and urban areas?

Despite migration being widespread, it remains poorly understood as a socio-historical, cultural and an economic phenomenon. There is indeed a compelling need to build a critical understanding of migration from different vantage points, locating migration at the cusp of changing nature of work, market and state interventions, and crisis. Keeping these realities in view, and the contradictions that surround labour migration, Azim Premji University, Bangalore is offering a short course for development practitioners.