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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. a (reconstructed) legal insitutionalist view of labour markets, 3. migration and british labour markets from 1945 to the present, 4. conclusion.

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Determining the Impact of Migration on Labour Markets: The Mediating Role of Legal Institutions

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Manoj Dias-Abey, Determining the Impact of Migration on Labour Markets: The Mediating Role of Legal Institutions, Industrial Law Journal , Volume 50, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 532–557, https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab030

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Critics of migration often claim that migrant workers displace local workers from jobs and apply downward pressure on wages. This article begins from the premise that it is impossible to understand the impact of migrant workers on labour markets without considering the functioning of law. Drawing on a reconstructed version of legal institutionalism, one that attends to the structuring influences of capitalist political economy and racism, this article considers the mediating role played by labour market institutions, such as collective bargaining and the contract of employment. An analysis of the historiography of migration to the UK since 1945 shows that labour market institutions have played a key role in influencing the inflow of migrant workers as well as the method of their incorporation into the labour market. In turn, migrant workers have intensified dynamics in the labour market that legal institutions have helped create, such as labour market segmentation. Migrant workers have also impacted the legal institutions themselves, either by being crucial actors in the creation of new legal institutions or by shaping the operation of existing ones.

Those who argue for reduced migration often do so on the basis of its assumed negative effects on the labour market. These minatory critics regularly claim that migration displaces local workers from jobs and drives down their wages. 1 Mainstream economists have tried to intervene in these discussions by analysing labour market data to determine the aggregate effects of migration on employment and unemployment rates and the wages of local workers. While acknowledging that the precise employment outcomes of migration will depend on factors such as domestic economic conditions and the skill level of migrants, most studies have found that migration has very little impact on employment outcomes, and a negligible impact on wages, although it is slightly more pronounced among ‘low-skilled’ workers. 2 Invariably, these studies are constructed as small case studies in which economists compare labour market data from geographical areas of high and low migration (‘spatial correlation’), or across skill groups that have experienced more or less competition from migrants (‘skill-cell correlation’), and then statistically parse out the effects of other factors. 3 Individual case studies sometimes provide mixed results since they are beset by definitional issues, limited by the availability of data and plagued by methodological disagreements. However, large-scale literature reviews can provide a fairly reliable picture because they iron out wrinkles that are inherent in small case studies. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), set up by the Labour government in 2007 to provide ‘transparent, independent and evidence-based advice to the government on migration issues’, has been asked to review the available economic evidence of migration on labour markets on three separate occasions. 4 MAC has concluded in 2012, 2014 and 2018 that the impact of migration on the labour market is small to non-existent. 5 What explains the findings of these surveys which confound simple economic logic about demand and supply? 6 Economists suggest that in the short term, whether migrants have a negative impact on jobs and wages depends on whether they have skills that substitute or complement those of existing workers. 7 In the longer term, economists point out that migrants add not only to labour supply, but also to labour demand. 8

While these studies provide a valuable perspective, labour lawyers should exercise some caution about simply accepting what mainstream economists tell about the relationships between migration and labour markets. For a start, these economic studies are based on assumptions about a prevailing state of equilibrium in labour markets, which is initially disturbed by migration but then eventually restored. Heterodox economists have long disputed that labour markets operate in this manner, instead emphasising their character as social institutions. Second, economists aim to predict the effects of migration by isolating the impact of migration from other factors using statistical tools such as regression analysis. However, these other factors, rather than clouding the issue, remain highly relevant—for example, how migration interacts with important components of labour markets, such as their labour laws, to produce particular effects, remains a critical question. Third, these studies treat migration as some sort of exogenous shock that needs to be analysed separately from the operation of labour markets themselves. In reality, migrants come looking for work in response to local labour market conditions. This means that migration is at the same time a factor that needs to be explained and also an explanatory factor in its own right. Fourth, economic studies provide only a snapshot on how migration has affected a specific splice of the labour market, while literature reviews provide an aggregate picture of the state of knowledge. What is urgently needed is an analysis of how specific labour markets affect migration, as well as an explanation of how migration impacts upon these labour markets.

Taking as an example the evolution of the British labour market in the period 1945 to the present, this article attempts to make visible the mechanisms by which migration and labour markets have interacted. I draw on a relatively new and inchoate theoretical framework, called legal institutionalism, to provide the theoretical scaffolding for this inquiry. 9 In the view of legal institutionalists, market dynamics are best studied by analysing the evolution of labour market institutions, such as the contract of employment and collective bargaining. Legal institutions are systems of rules inherited from the social environment and which shape the way that market actors behave. 10 In modern capitalist economies, legal institutions are made up primarily of legal norms supported by state-mandated enforcement apparatuses, but legal institutions also include cultural factors that shape the way that legal norms are given effect. If we foreground the role of legal institutions in our analysis of the historiography of migration to the UK since 1945, we can see that labour market institutions have mediated the relationship between migration and labour markets in several important ways. Since legal institutions are responsible for shaping the labour market, the need for migrant workers arises, in part, from their operation. Legal institutions also channel migrants seeking work into particular industries and jobs and determine their terms and conditions of employment. The entry of migrant workers in relatively large numbers—although never quite as high as in the frenzied imagination of migration’s critics—does impact upon labour markets despite economists’ assertations to the contrary. Migration deepens segmentation and can end up influencing the legal institutions themselves. In the following analysis, I use legal institutionalism as a methodological tool to study the relationship between migration and labour markets because it reveals the mediating function of law.

Before I proceed, the terms ‘migrant worker’ and ‘labour market’ require further explanation. Despite being in common usage, the meanings of these terms are not self-evident. Beginning with the concept of a labour market, it is clear that there are two main ways in which the labour market concept is deployed—a general labour market where employers and employees interact with each other and the price of labour is determined by competition (external labour market), and the firm-specific market where the price of labour is determined by administrative rules (internal labour market). 11 This article is mainly interested in the functioning of the external labour market, or more accurately, labour markets since markets can be simultaneously envisioned as sectoral, occupational, local, national and international depending on the actors in question. The term migrant worker —a decidedly contemporary term that I project back to study migration since the middle of the 20th century—is even slipperier. It usually refers to someone who is a national of one country but joins the labour market of another. 12 At the UK national level, a migrant worker has sometimes been defined as someone who is born overseas, while at other times, it is taken to refer to someone who is a national of another country. In either case, migrant workers comprise those who come in search of work but may also include those who enter under other streams—for example, family, study, or as asylum seekers—and eventually join the labour market. In this article, I mainly focus on labour migrants (that is, those who come in search of work), but will occasionally expand my analysis to include other categories of migrants. In some cases, I even include the progeny and descendants of migrants in my analysis because these are the terms in which the racialised debate is sometimes conducted. The inconsistency of meaning, together with the availability of data, make it difficult to accurately measure the number of migrant workers in the labour market at any point in time. While a range of statistical sources can be drawn upon—Long-Term International Migration and International Passenger Surveys, Migrant National Insurance Number Registrations, work permits issued etc.—individually, these sources only gesture at the overall picture.

This article proceeds in three main parts. In Section 2, I provide the key precepts of legal institutionalism and propose two important addendums that are necessary before it can be utilised to study the impacts of migration: situating legal institutions within broader trends in the capitalist political economy, and an account of how racism operates within institutions. Section 3 contains the substantive analysis of how legal institutions have mediated the relationship between migration and labour markets. I provide this history in two chronological periods (1945–80 and 1980–present) for reasons that will soon become clear. The focus of my discussion is how legal institutions have affected the flow and impact of migration, and how migration has in turn impacted upon the labour market and legal institutions. In the concluding section, I briefly summarise my main arguments.

There is nothing natural about describing the contracting of work for pay as a market, although it follows a general pattern in which we tend to think about the economic arena as a series of interlocking markets in which products and inputs are exchanged for money. For critical scholars, the reality of class relations is often concealed by seeing market interactions as underpinned by consensual, contractual relations. Even if we agree on the cautious adoption of the labour market as a unit of analysis, this still raises some questions about how we should conceptualise how markets arise and function. Economists from competing schools of thought hold vastly different views on these questions. According to the neoclassical school, for example, the demand for labour is determined by its marginal productivity and the supply is dependent on marginal utility. 13 Here we are introduced to the ‘methodological individualism’ that characterises the mainstream of economics today, as well as a theory of utility maximisation as the motivating force in human action. Institutional economics provide much better place and time sensitive conceptualisations of markets. One of the key themes of the institutionalists is a rejection of the idea of the utility-maximising economic agent. 14 Instead, for institutionalists, market relationships need to be understood with reference to social structures and discourses. The gravamen of the institutionalist contribution is the idea that institutions —that is, systems of rules inherited from our social environment—shape the way that market participants act. 15 In the act of doing, market participants then reproduce institutions so that they continue to endure in social life. In this view, markets vary considerably across space and time and the best way to study markets is to examine the institutions that underpin them in a society and their transformation over a particular period.

Modern institutionalism has now grown into a complex area of inquiry incorporating rational choice, historical, discursive and organisational institutionalism. 16 In this article, I draw particularly on legal institutionalism, a relatively recent branch of institutionalism. 17 Legal institutionalists emphasise the social rules that undergird markets and are chiefly interested in those rules that are supported by the power and authority of the state. Legal institutionalists do not claim that other social rules, such as those embedded in customary or cultural practices, are immaterial, but simply that they are unlikely to play a comparable role to formal law, which constitutes, shapes and reproduces markets in advanced capitalist societies. For the legal institutionalists, the centrality of law to markets mean that markets have no prior existence to the law. 18 Since markets are underpinned by a range of institutions (eg, money, contract etc.), it is not always simple to identify the relevant legal institutions to study. Following the work of Simon Deakin and Frank Wilkinson, I take the contract of employment (which includes common law principles as well as statutory regulation that prescribe minimum contracting terms) and collective bargaining as the two key labour market institutions. 19 The final legal institution that plays a major role in my analysis is an institution that helps manage the entry of workers into the labour market: migration law. While Deakin and Wilkinson included the duty to work—which in the modern era finds expression in social security law—as a major legal institution regulating entry to the labour market, given the space constraints of this article, my main focus will be migration law. There are, of course, complex relationships to disentangle between migration law and the duty to work, and their respective roles in regulating entry into labour markets, but this remains a task for another day. 20

Before legal institutionalism can be usefully utilised to study how migration impacts labour markets, two correctives are necessary. It is helpful to think of these correctives as operating on a ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ level, respectively. Turning first to the micro-level corrective, legal institutionalism often expresses a single-minded focus on legal norms as guiding human action at the expense of cultural ones which might shape the way that legal norms are given effect in particular situations. This is evident in the conceptualisation of labour markets advanced by legal institutionalists that tends to overlook how racism functions as a constitutive feature of labour markets. 21 Tracing the operation of racism is not merely an exercise driven by current political vogues, but rather critical to understanding how ‘real’ labour markets operate, especially when the issue of migration is under consideration. How then to account for racism’s role in constituting and structuring labour markets? The starting point in this analysis is to recognise that the relevant category of analysis is racism, not race, since racism produces race. 22 Racism is ideological in nature, and as Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown have outlined, it uses biological and/or somatic characteristics to socially differentiate particular populations. 23 Of course, emphasising the ideological character of racism is not to downplay the deeply material effects of racism. As theorists of race and colonialism often point out, the ideological content of racism is deeply informed by the racial ordering system that developed during the colonial period, although its modern manifestations show constant evidence of mutation. 24 If we marry legal institutionalism with an account of racism as an ideology, we can begin to uncover the causal mechanisms at play. We can think of racism as a miasma that pervades all market institutions, and therefore, influences the way that market participants give effect to legal norms in practice. In turn, by operationalising legal norms in all sorts of racially discriminatory ways, racial ideology is reinscribed in legal institutions and kept alive more broadly in society.

The macro-level corrective seeks to situate the legal institutions more squarely in the functioning of contemporary capitalism. Given their methodological commitment to understanding capitalism in a situated way, legal institutionalists have correctly tended to avoid developing universal, teleological principles to describe the progression of markets. Instead, legal institutionalists have tended to draw on various theoretical tools from the biological world to explain the evolution of legal institutions in a gradual, contingent and path-dependent way. 25 However, as a prominent institutionalist has recently argued, institutionalism needs to operate alongside theory of capitalist development. 26 I situate labour market institutions more firmly within ‘accumulation regimes’, which the French régulation school of economics traditionally describe as ‘ social and economic patterns that enable [capital] accumulation to occur in the long term between two structural crises ’. 27 According to these writers, configurations of social relations such as institutions have a direct relationship to the economy by helping to give effect and stabilise particular accumulation regimes. This does not mean that legal institutions simply reflect the needs of capital; they express their own histories, logics, technologies and techniques. However, accumulation regimes have a structuring function on legal institutions, particularly in the labour market. This article analyses migration to the UK from 1945 to 2020, a period that encompasses two different accumulation regimes—the period roughly from 1945 to 1980 is characterised by a ‘Fordist’ accumulation regime and the period from 1980 to present is characterised by a ‘post-Fordist’ accumulation regime. 28

The impacts of migration on labour markets are deep and variegated, and there are many ways to set out the narrative of British regulation from 1945. The periodisation that I adopt below is chronological, delineated by major shifts in British political economy and legal change. Roughly speaking, the first period (1945–80) was when migration to the UK was high in response to labour market gaps created by a high-growth economy, low unemployment and the needs of British industry. This period ends with growing legal restrictions on migration due to a racist backlash at home. The second period (1980–present) begins at the point when Britain started to experiment with a series of radical reforms to address major economic problems that had developed in the preceding decades. While the first two decades of this period were marked by relatively low levels of migration, the inflow of people began to climb from 2000 onwards in response to changes in the labour market precipitated by the Thatcherite reforms and continued under New Labour. This period ends with the passage of a new immigration system designed to restrict ‘unskilled’ immigration.

Writing about Britain’s post-war economic performance, one commentator observed that ‘for a quarter of a century or so after the Second World War the British people enjoyed full employment, no major recessions and the fastest rate of economic growth ever experienced on a sustained basis, as well as its most egalitarian distribution’. 29 These outcomes were the result of what is sometimes called a ‘Fordist’ regime of accumulation, characterised by combination of industrial production through vertically integrated firms, mass consumption, class compromise and the Keynesian welfare state. 30 The government recognised that the longevity of these developments required that sufficient workers could be found to fulfil the requirement for production. 31 To achieve this end, the government used a variety of methods to recruit workers from Europe, including resettling Polish soldiers who had served under British command and recruiting displaced persons through contract labour programmes such as ‘Balt Cygnet’ and ‘Westward Ho!’. By 1950, the population of ‘aliens’ (those not from the British mainland or its overseas territories) almost doubled to 430,000 from 239,000 in 1939. 32 In addition, without direct government intervention, a steady stream of migrants continued to arrive from Ireland in the period following the war—a source of reserve labour in England since the industrial revolution—and by 1970, this group formed the largest minority in Britain (approximately one million). 33

Another large pool of migrant labour arrived from the former Commonwealth countries in the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. The change that facilitated their arrival had little to do with deliberate government action. In the post-war period, the UK was grappling with its post-imperial future. Keen to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of the British Empire, the Labour government passed the British Nationality Act 1948 , which converted the status of all those who had formerly been subjects into ‘Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies’. These citizens, whether born in the UK or overseas in a British colony, had the right to enter and reside in the UK and enjoyed all political, civil and social rights upon arrival. The 1948 Act also recognised as mostly equal the citizenship of the newly independent Commonwealth countries (eg, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and older independent states (eg, Canada and Australia). 34 The proximate cause of the 1948 Act was that several of Britain’s former colonies—Canada, Australia and South Africa—were taking legislative steps to craft independent national identities by defining citizenship in ways that would dilute the meaning of British subjecthood. 35 Although never intended as a piece of immigration legislation, the passage of the 1948 Act had the effect of allowing a relatively large influx of immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. 36 Between 1948 and 1962, around 500,000 racialised people (referred to as ‘coloured immigrants’ in public discussions at the time) arrived in Britain. 37 While some employers, such as London Transport, British Rail and the National Health Service, worked actively to recruit workers from these regions, some elements of the state worked behind the scenes to hinder this movement rather than promote it. 38

While the government may have created a facilitative legal framework opening the British labour market to migrants, it is important to recognise that this migration was driven primarily by domestic labour market conditions in Britain. Labour shortages were a major concern in the post-war recovery, which the government estimated to be between 600,000 and 1.3 million in 1946. 39 This situation was further exacerbated by the large numbers of Britons leaving the UK for greener pastures in other countries—between 1946 and 1965, over 1.8 million people left the UK, a great proportion financially aided by post-war migration schemes. 40 In their influential study, Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack argued that it was not only the lack of workers that was the driving cause of migration in post-war Western Europe, but also the structure of national labour markets. 41 According to these authors, in circumstances of low unemployment, indigenous workers were able to graduate to better remunerated and stable jobs, leaving gaps in unskilled manual roles that were difficult to fill. During the period from 1945 to 1970, unemployment rates generally remained between 1% and 3%, only moving beyond this range in 1972, and then, only slowly. 42 Offering higher wages for these undesirable jobs was not seen as a viable response because employers feared a decrease in export competitiveness and the government was worried about inflation. 43 Hence, migrant workers provided an ideal solution. In fact, a migrant workforce may have helped contribute to the competitiveness of British industry during this period by keeping a lid on wage inflation, eliminating production bottlenecks, and allowing the implementation of new work processes such as shift work. 44 Lending support to this thesis, it is clear that many of the racialised workers that arrived in the period following the war occupied semi-skilled and unskilled roles in industries such as the textile industry and in foundry works, or worked as cleaners, porters and kitchen hands in the expanding services sectors. 45 Notable features of this work include low pay, shift work, asocial hours, disagreeable working environments and low levels of upward mobility. 46 In the low-paid services sector, migrant workers were joined by female workers, then entering the labour market in increasing numbers. 47

The legal institutions of the labour market at the time facilitated this mode of migrant labour incorporation. Up until 1963, employers could contract with workers with little statutory constraint, and after that with only minimal regulation in the areas of notice of termination, redundancy and equal pay. 48 Since migration was left up to market forces to determine, the arrival of migrant workers closely tracked economic conditions in Britain and employer preferences. 49 The prevalent system of collective bargaining also did nothing to ameliorate this differential access to the labour market and usually exacerbated it. In the post-war period leading up to the 1970s, collective bargaining consisted of a variety of overlapping agreements at the level of industry, company, and plant. 50 Generally speaking, industry-wide agreements between employer association and unions regulated rates of pay (which acted as minima in practice), while relatively informal plant-level agreements made between local shop stewards and managers regulated a whole host of matters such as incentive pay, overtime and work processes. 51 These negotiations took place in the absence of detailed legal regulation, although not entirely without legal support. 52 Due to the fact that racist ideas had a strong hold over the white working class during this period, informal plant-level agreements often disadvantaged racialised workers—for example, it was common for shop stewards to negotiate ‘colour quotas’, rules prioritising racialised workers for redundancy or allow shift work as long as it only affected migrant workers. 53 Even when shop stewards were not directly colluding with management to implement discriminatory arrangements, there was a general lack of awareness or failure to acknowledge the particular circumstances faced by racialised workers. 54 The way in which the two central labour market institutions functioned during this period demonstrates how interaction of cultural and legal norms manifested in discriminatory outcomes. On the contract of employment, employer prejudice determined who was offered work and on what terms. With regards to collective bargaining, racism among employers and union actors had very real effects in terms of excluding migrant workers from good jobs and promotion.

From the 1960s there was a noticeable hardening of public attitudes towards unskilled immigration from the Indian sub-continent and Caribbean. We can locate some of this shift in attitude within changing material conditions. Although far less severe than the economic deterioration that Britain was to experience in the 1970s, the 1960s were characterised by various economic malaises including stagnation, balance of payment issues and a return to mass unemployment. 55 Rising racial tensions, fomented by racist groups and opportunistic politicians, also played their part. 56 The Conservative government, later supported by Labour, responded by progressively passing legislation to restrict immigration from the New Commonwealth. The first piece of legislation, which was passed in 1962, guaranteed entry to those who held a passport issued by a dependency government (which excluded India and Jamaica, which were the source of most of the immigration) or those who could obtain a work voucher from the Ministry of Labour. Work vouchers were offered for those who had pre-arranged employment or skills/occupations considered to be in short supply. The immigration control had an immediate effect, reducing the number of racialised workers from 136,400 in 1961 to 57,046 in 1963. 57 Further restrictions on vouchers were introduced in 1965, and 1968, 1969 and 1971. 58 The 1971 legislation signalled a particularly stark break with the relatively liberal immigration regime of the prior period because it ended the right of Commonwealth citizens to enter the country unless they had a parent or grandparent born in the UK. The 1968 and 1971 legislation were introduced specifically to prevent—as it turned out unsuccessfully—settlement by South Asians who had been expelled from Kenya and Uganda respectively. 59 Work permits for semi-skilled and unskilled jobs were also no longer issued. 60 This signalled a move away from a system of free mobility to a contract labour system, which tied workers’ entry directly to labour market conditions.

One further development from this period ought to be mentioned. The 1970s also saw an increase in labour organising among racialised workers, particularly among female migrant workers. 61 The most prominent example was the 1976 strike at the Grunwick photo processing plant led by a group of determined South Asian women, which galvanised national support from workers and unions. 62 However, not all of the activism by migrant workers in this period fitted the general mould of action that we would usually associate with labour politics. There was also a surge in activism in the community, including among second-generation migrants. 63 This form of activism was to have important consequences for the way in which access to the labour market was regulated. Mobilisation by community organisations was crucial in the government passing the Race Discrimination Act 1965 and subsequently strengthening the legislative framework to cover discrimination in the private sphere (employment, housing and service provision). 64 In this instance, grassroots pressure coincided with the Labour Government’s stratagem to present racial equality legislation as the quid pro quo of immigration restriction. 65 Social movement pressure was also a significant factor in extending coverage to ‘indirect discrimination’ in 1976, an innovation introduced by the Sex Discrimination Act’s passage a year earlier. While racial discrimination legislation was to have disappointing results overall, 66 these legislative measures did have some effect in improving labour market access for racialised workers by allowing the norm of racial equality to radiate throughout society. 67 Equally importantly, some of the institutional innovations pioneered by the now-defunct Commission for Racial Equality, for example its strategy of initiating proactive investigations, have continued to influence the operation of the Equality and Human Rights Commission today. 68

B. 1980–Present

Margaret Thatcher’s election as Prime Minister on 4 May 1979 marked the beginning of a new era in Britain. The main elements of the Thatcherite political economy are by now well known. Chief among them was a decisive move towards monetarism in macroeconomic policy-making, 69 massive changes to the operation of the financial sector, 70 and public-sector reform. 71 Another key aspect of the Thatcherite agenda was reforming the labour market to conform with a particular vision of free exchange between employer and worker. Paul Davies and Mark Freedland argue that the government was driven by two related goals: ensuring that the labour market could operate flexibly and reducing the power of trade unions that were seen to impose collective restrictions. 72 The powers of trade unions were attacked by imposing procedural constraints on taking strike action (eg, introducing secret balloting requirements), placing severe restrictions on various forms of activity that enhanced the countervailing power of organised labour (eg, closed shop/union membership agreements, secondary action, picketing) and a retreat from various corporatist arrangements that accorded unions an important role in the nation’s economic policy-making process. These transformations were brought about not only by changes to labour law (reducing the scope of the trade union immunities from common law liability), but also by selective amendments to social welfare and criminal law. 73 Given dispensation by the government and reassured that the large numbers of workers joining the ranks of the unemployed would strengthen their bargaining position, private sector employers were quick to take advantage of the situation. They did so by restructuring their operations and by beating back union efforts to engage in collective bargaining. 74 In 1979, over 80% of the workforce had been covered by a collective agreement, after almost two decades of Conservative rule, that number had dropped to less than half of that figure. 75 These labour law changes marked the advent of employment relations based on ‘flexibility’, work intensification and decline in the standard model of employment, which some have described as a ‘post-Fordist’ regime of accumulation. 76

The impacts of this series of changes were profound, leading to a sudden spike in unemployment, which peaked at 13% in 1982 and remained higher than 6% until 1990. 77 These labour market transformations had an enormous impact on migrant workers, including those who had been born in the UK but were nevertheless racialised as outsiders. Deindustrialisation and privatisation led to the gradual disappearances of internal labour markets where workers could join a firm and hope to advance through seniority. 78 This process was also hastened by firms increasingly outsourcing or contracting out ‘core’ functions, and those employed in these new entities were often drawn from the external labour market. 79 While migrant workers did not generally benefit from the operation of internal labour markets due to their exclusion through plant-level agreements, the erosion of internal markets meant that competition increased in external labour markets that were now separated into a ‘core’ segment characterised by job security and mobility, and a ‘secondary’ segment typified by insecure and contingent work. 80 Competition for jobs in the secondary labour market had always been fierce under conditions of high unemployment, but the addition of workers previously employed in firms that relied upon stable models of employment relations, and those who found themselves newly unemployed, intensified competition. Survey data from the period show that migrant workers were disproportionately represented among the unemployed, which means that some of the competition in secondary labour markets was between different groups of migrant workers. 81

This is the context in which additional migration during the 1980s and 1990s needs to be understood. Migration under free movement from the European Economic Community (and European Union after 1993) did not have much of an effect given the entity’s small membership at that time and the similarity of economic conditions with the UK’s. 82 Accordingly, when the government passed the Immigration Act 1988 to ensure that workers from the EEC did not need permission to enter or remain in the UK, immigration did not increase significantly. One of the early actions of the Thatcher government in the field of immigration was to introduce the British Nationality Act 1981 , which finally sundered the concept of citizenship from the Commonwealth and linked it firmly to the British nation. While the legislation retained a quota for work permits from the Commonwealth, this was restricted to 5,000 per year. 83 Over the course of the decade, the number of work permits granted gradually crept up, and by 1996 there were roughly 20,000 work permits, but a significant portion of these went to workers in professional and managerial roles (approximately 70%). 84 Many of these work permits were granted to citizens of the USA and Japan, which were Britain’s major trading partners outside the European Community at the time. 85 It should be noted that non-labour flows of migration continued to rise during this period—for example, political turmoil in countries such as Sri Lanka and Somalia in the 1990s saw a sharp increase in those seeking asylum—and many of those who were ultimately granted refugee status joined the labour market. 86

The Blair government that assumed office in 1997 was committed to continuing significant parts of the agenda that characterised British political economy under the previous Conservative government. 87 Influenced by ‘Third Way’ thinking that emphasised the competitiveness of enterprises along with the equal opportunity and social inclusion of workers, but also never entirely constrained by this philosophy, the Labour government (self-described as ‘New Labour’) retained significant aspects of labour market regulation. 88 New Labour did make some impact and the broad outlines of the employment and labour law reforms that Labour went on to enact can be found in a 1998 White Paper titled ‘Fairness at Work’. 89 The White Paper promised several new rights for individuals, including a new minimum wage, a shorter qualifying period to bring an unfair dismissal claim, working time regulation and an extension of parental leave entitlements. In the case of working time and parental leave, the government was seeking to implement EU-level obligations. In the area of collective bargaining, Labour left intact the basic architecture of the previous government’s draconian anti-union legislation (ballots before strikes, and prohibition of mass/flying pickets and secondary action) but did introduce a new statutory procedure for ascertaining whether majority employee support existed for collective bargaining within a particular workplace. 90 The intention behind New Labour’s labour market regulation was to facilitate the continuation of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation.

These arrangements deepened labour market segmentation in a number of ways and migration became a solution for many of the problems generated by these developments. Flexible production through outsourcing, for example, increased the number of workers subject to the highly competitive secondary segment of the labour market. Equally, the new employment standards stabilised a set of status-based distinctions (agency work, part-time, fixed term etc.) which operated to stratify and fix into place a variety of distinctions in the labour market. 91 Along with other dynamics such as under-investment in training, increasing use of technology by employers and the general immobility of local labour due to social ties, this generated a need for migrant workers at both the ‘high skilled’ and ‘low skilled’ end of the labour market. 92 During the period of New Labour, employers were able to satisfy this demand through a variety of paths. New Labour’s general attitude towards migration was that it could be managed to deliver positive economic outcomes, which explains its relatively relaxed and open attitude towards labour migration. 93 The main avenue was through EU free movement, which since the accession of the ‘EU-8’ countries in 2004, and Bulgaria and Romania three years later (‘EU-2’ countries), has provided a steady stream of workers into low-skilled occupations in industries such as hospitality, transport & storage, manufacturing and agriculture. 94 Some booming sectors, such as construction, looking to benefit from weaker labour rights in some of the newly acceded states, imported workers under the EU’s posted worker regime. 95 Workers from non-EEA countries could also enter the country via a range of mechanisms including by obtaining a work permit, as Working Holiday Makers, under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, Sector Based Schemes (2003–2008), or the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (2002–08). 96 From 2008, a ‘Points-Based System’ (PBS) was introduced to replace a number of the routes of entry for non-EEA migrants. 97 Work permits, and the PBS that superseded it, provided workers for sectors such as IT, finance and education. 98 By the end of the decade, nationals from India, USA, China, Japan and Australia were generally the top users of this route. 99 It is important to note that unlike the migration from the former Commonwealth during the 1945–80, this second significant wave of migration—the overall migrant population nearly doubled between 2005 and 2017, rising from 5.3 million to 9.4 million— 100 occurred during a period of relatively high unemployment (between 2000 and 2016, unemployment stubbornly remained at close to five percent or above). 101 So, rather than labour shortages, the segmented labour markets produced by the Thatcherite reforms and continued by New Labour created the conditions for the entry of migrant workers during this period.

How did labour market institutions channel this new influx of workers into particular industries and jobs? The answer to this question is complicated and requires us to consider the operation of labour market institutions in which racism is an entrenched feature. Many of the highly skilled workers that entered during this period did so under EU free movement or work permits. These workers were motivated to choose particular jobs and remain in them either through high wages/good working conditions, tied visas, or a combination of the two. Time-bound, employer-tied visas mean that workers are less likely to challenge their employer because they fear they will be deported, which can produce servile employment relations in the labour market. 102 In contrast, low-skilled workers entering the UK under EU free movement (primarily from E-8 and EU-2 countries) were guided into particular jobs and kept there through labour market institutions in which racism was an embedded feature. Alana Lentin has pointed out that a new form of ‘xenoracism’, directed against Eastern Europeans, has taken root in Britain, meaning racism that is based on perceived cultural differences rather than simply being colour-coded. 103 Given the challenge of enforcing equality norms contained in anti-discrimination law at the point of recruitment, the contract of employment continued to provide employers with almost complete discretion in deciding which jobs to offer workers as well as their working conditions once employed. There is ample evidence that some employers prefer hiring migrant workers for low-wage jobs because they expect that these workers will have lower expectations around wages, temporal rhythms and the place of work; employers, of course, rarely explicitly stated this view, instead choosing to express their preferences in terms of statements about ‘superior work ethic’. 104

Once migrant workers have begun to work in the secondary segment through the sorting function of legal institutions, they can soon become entrenched within this segment. This is because of two dynamics within legal institutions concerning their operation in relation to migrants. The first dynamic relates to the way in which legal norms can interact to reinforce precarity for migrant workers. Take for example the protection against unfair dismissal, which is the primary means for workers to attain a measure of job security in the labour market. The Employment Rights Act 1996 requires that an employee has served a minimum of 2 years’ continuous service before accruing this right, which for some migrant workers presents a particular difficulty because of the operation of time-limited of visas or their employment in temporary roles with irregular hours. 105 Another example is the way in which the courts can deem contracts ‘illegal’, and therefore unenforceable when it comes to claiming employment rights, in circumstances where workers are ‘illegally’ working under s 34 of the Immigration Act 2016. 106 This population is estimated to be between 800,000 and 1.2 million in the UK; 107 a portion of these workers might have commenced work with the proper authorisation but lost it due to a variety of administrative reasons. The second dynamic relates to the way in which employment rights are enforced in Britain. A panoply of enforcement agencies (HRMC, HSE, GLAA, EAS) that are supposed to uphold employment standards have trouble fulfilling their mandates due to under resourcing, lack of coordination among agencies, and absence of specific strategies to target migrant workers. 108 This means that workers are required to enforce their own individual rights by bringing claims in the Employment Tribunal system, and individual enforcement of rights tends to be especially low among low-wage migrant workers. 109 The near absence collective bargaining in the industries in which migrant workers were employed means that unions, now predisposed to observe anti-racism norms, have not been able to ameliorate some of these effects. The segmentation of the labour market and the employment of migrants in the secondary segment has a self-reinforcing tendency. The gradual deterioration of working conditions leads local workers to eschew these jobs, and employers look to migrant workers as a substitute workforce, developing symbiotic relationships with labour contractors or migrant/ethnic networks to fill these positions. This dynamic is visible in a number of sectors, such as food processing, 110 hospitality 111 and social care. 112

Since the UK’s exit from the European Union, the government has implemented a new immigration system, which represents a radical break from free movement that characterised the previous regime. This system has been in place since 1 January 2021. At the heart of the system is an expansion of the Tier 2-visa route. Applicants must have a job offer by an approved sponsor that pays above the minimum salary level, which is the higher of £25,500 or a stipulated ‘going rate’ (or £20,480 in certain circumstances), a job at least at the intermediate skill level (RFQ3 or above), and English language skills. As Jonathan Portes has recently observed, the new immigration system represents a major liberalisation for non-EU migrants, since about half of all full-time jobs would now qualify someone for a Tier 2 visa. 113 The visa requirements in essence prevent so-called low-skilled migration, although sector-specific alternatives might be rolled out such as the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Pilot programme designed for the agricultural sector. Employers in the secondary segment employing low-wage and precarious workers are likely to be lose out by these changes, and there is already some evidence of this in sectors such as hospitality. 114

The above analysis reveals that legal institutions have played an important mediating role in the relationship between migration and labour markets since 1945, when sustained immigration to the UK began. The specific mediating role has shifted over time. During the Fordist period of accumulation, which saw an influx of migrant workers from the former Commonwealth countries, the legal institutions funnelled workers into semi and unskilled jobs in export-oriented manufacturing and the expanding services sector, ensuring that they remained there by hindering their promotion. Organising by migrants shaped the labour market by creating a legal institution that promoted equality norms. In the post-Fordist period of accumulation, major reforms to labour market institutions created a highly flexible but segmented labour market. The wave of migrants that arrived in the new millennium, particularly from E-8 and E-2 countries, was channelled into jobs at both the upper and lower ends of the labour market. The legal institutions operate to keep migrants initially placed in the secondary sector confined to it. As a corollary, given that the UK has decided to restrict the migration of ‘low-skilled’ and low-wage workers going forward, are we likely to see the predictions of anti-migrant fabulists about rising wages and plentiful jobs come true? It is unlikely. Rather, we can be fairly sure that as long as the legal institutions of the labour market remain unchanged, the dynamics described in this article will remain in place.

This article was presented at an online event organised by the ‘Work on Demand’ team in June 2021 and benefited greatly from the comments received from members of the audience. I also want to thank Bridget Anderson, Ruth Dukes, Paddy Ireland and the two anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful feedback on an earlier draft. All errors of fact and interpretation, of course, remain my own.

These arguments was often raised in the fractious debate leading up to the UK’s vote on membership of the European Union—see, eg, C. Cooper, ‘Boris Johnson Says “Uncontrolled” Immigration from EU Is Driving Down Wages and Putting Pressure on NHS’ The Independent (23 March 2016). https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-says-uncontrolled-immigration-eu-driving-down-wages-and-putting-pressure-nhs-a6948346.html (accessed 15 July 2021).

See, eg, S. Nickell and J. Saleheen, ‘The Impact of Immigration on Occupational Wages: Evidence from Britain’ (London: Bank of England, 2015). Staff Working Paper No. 574. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/working-paper/2015/the-impact-of-immigration-on-occupational-wages-evidence-from-britain.pdf?la=en&hash=16F94BC8B55F06967E1F36249E90ECE9B597BA9C ; S. Lemos and J. Portes, ‘New Labour? The Impact of Migration from Central and Eastern European Countries on the UK Labour Market’ (Bonn: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor), 2008) Discussion Paper Series IZA DP No. 3756. https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/3756/new-labour-the-impact-of-migration-from-central-and-eastern-european-countries-on-the-uk-labour-market ; C. Dustmann, F. Fabbri and I. Preston, ‘The Impact of Immigration on the British Labour Market’ (2005) 115 Economic Journal F324.

C. Devlin and others, ‘Impacts of Migration on UK Native Employment: An Analytical Review of the Evidence’ (London: Home Office and Department of Businesses Innovation & Skills, 2014) Occasional Paper 19. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/287287/occ109.pdf .

M. Ruhs, ‘“Independent Experts” and Immigration Policies in the UK: Lessons from the Migration Advisory Committee and the Migration Observatory’ in M. Ruhs, K. Tamas and J. Palme (eds), Bridging the Gaps: Linking Research to Public Debates and Policy-Making on Migration and Integration (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019), at 72.

D. Metcalf (Chair), ‘Analysis of the Impacts of Migration’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2012); D. Metcalf (Chair), ‘Migrants in Low-Skilled Work: The Growth of EU and Non-EU Labour in Low-Skilled Jobs and Its Impact on the UK’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2014); A. Manning (Chair), ‘EEA Migration in the UK: Final Report’ (London: Migration Advisory Committee, 2018).

On the left, a crude reading of Marxism arrives at the same position—see, eg, A. Nagle, ‘The Left Case Against Open Borders’ (2018) II American Affairs . https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/the-left-case-against-open-borders/ . However, sophisticated and contextual analyses present a more complicated picture: see, eg, C. Czabla, ‘Reading Marx on Migration’ ( Legal Form , 30 July 2018). https://legalform.blog/2018/07/30/reading-marx-on-migration-chris-szabla/ .

M. Ruhs and C. Vargas-Silva, ‘The Labour Market Effects of Immigration’ (The Migration Observatory 2020) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/ (accessed 29 April 2021).

J. Portes, What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Immigration? (London: Sage Publications, 2019), at 29.

See, eg, S. Deakin and F. Wilkinson, The Law of the Labour Market: Industrialization, Employment, and Legal Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); G. M. Hodgson, Conceptualizing Capitalism: Institutions, Evolution, Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); S. Deakin and others, ‘Legal Institutionalism: Capitalism and the Constitutive Role of Law’ (2017) 45 Journal of Comparative Economics 188; K. Pistor, The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). See Section 2 of this paper for further elaboration.

G. M. Hodgson, ‘What Are Institutions?’ (2006) 40 Journal of Economic Issues 1.

J. Howe, R. Johnstone and R. Mitchell, ‘Constituting and Regulating the Labour Market for Social and Economic Purposes’ in C. Arup and others (eds), Labour Law and Labour Market Regulation (Sydney: Federation Press, 2006).

See, eg, definition of ‘migrant worker’ in International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (adopted 18 December 1990, entered into force 1 July 2003) 2220 UNTS 3.

For a good discussion of the neoclassical theory on the demand for labour and supply of labour, see J. E. King, Labour Economics , 2nd edn (London: MacMillan, 1990), Chs 2 and 3.

See, eg, G. M. Hodgson, The Evolution of Institutional Economics (London: Routledge, 2004).

Hodgson, ‘What Are Institutions?’ (n.10).

J. L. Campbell and O. K. Pedersen, ‘Introduction’, The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

See above n.9.

Legal norms and enforcement mechanisms clearly play an important role in the functioning of labour markets, although there are varying conceptualisations of the role that law plays in regulating the exchange of labour power for money. In the neoclassical and Hayekian traditions, which are quick to condemn the market-distorting effects of law, there is still an acknowledgement that certain laws, primarily property and contract, play an important market-facilitative role: see A. Lang, ‘Market Anti-Naturalisms’ in J. Destautels-Stein and C. Tomlins (eds), Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Deakin and Wilkinson (n.9).

While the Duty to Work and migration law will work in tandem to control supply in labour markets, they are also often pitted against each other since migration is said, erroneously, to undermine domestic welfare systems: see, eg, P. Hansen, A Modern Migration Theory: An Alternative Economic Approach to Failed EU Policy (London: Agenda Publishing, 2021).

L. Tilley and R. Shilliam, ‘Raced Markets: An Introduction’ (2018) 23 New Political Economy 534.

On the social construction of race, see, eg, M. Omi and H. Winant, Racial Formation in the United States , 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2015).

R. Miles and M. Brown, Racism , 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). See also A. Sivanandan, ‘Race, Class and the State: The Black Experience in Britain’ 17 Race and Class 347.

S. Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); R. Shilliam, Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit (Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, 2018).

Hodgson sees the process of evolution through the lens of a redeemed social Darwinianism shorn of its racially legitimating applications: G. M. Hodgson, Economics and Evolution: Bringing Life Back into Economics , reprint edition (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Deakin and Wilkinson, influenced by systems theory, see legal evolution as only weakly linked with economic transformations: Deakin and Wilkinson (n.9).

W. Streeck, ‘Institutions in History: Bringing Capitalism Back in’ (Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, 2009). https://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp09-8.pdf .

R. Boyer and Y. Saillard, ‘A Summary of Régulation Theory’ in Robert Boyer and Yves Saillard (eds), Régulation Theory: The State of the Art (London: Routledge, 2002). For the text that is often seen as launching this perspective, see M. Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation—The US Experience (London: Verso, 2015).

P. Thompson, ‘Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can’t Keep Their Side of the Bargain’ (2003) 17 Work, Employment and Society 359; M. Vidal, ‘Postfordism as a Dysfunctional Accumulation Regime: A Comparative Analysis of the USA, the UK and Germany’ (2013) 27 Work, Employment and Society 451.

R. Middleton, The British Economy Since 1945 (London: MacMillan, 2000), 25. Cf. those who thought that the period following the Second World War was marred by a series of malaises including low rates of growth relative to comparable economies, balance of payment problems, and eclipsed imperial ambitions that acted as a drain on resources, including A. Shonfield, British Economic Policy Since the War (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958).

See Thompson (n.28); Vidal (n.28).

C. Holmes, John Bull’s Island: Immigration & British Society, 1871–1971 (London: MacMillan, 1988), at 210.

Ibid., at 214.

Ibid., at 216.

For a discussion of the various statuses under the 1948 Act and their relation, see I. S. Patel, We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (London: Verso, 2021), 56–58.

N. El-Enany, Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), Ch 3.

B. Anderson, Us and Them?: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

El-Enany (n.35).

G. K. Bhambra and J. Holmwood, ‘Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State’ (2018) 23 N ew Political Economy 574.

Patel (n.34), at 46.

Ibid., at 51.

S. Castles and G. Kosack, Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe , 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). While unemployment rates spiked in 1946–47, the Labour Government’s policies directed at achieving full employment succeeded, managing to reduce unemployment to under 2% of the insured labour force from 1948 onwards: K. O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), at 183.

J. Denman and P. McDonald, ‘Unemployment Statistics from 1881 to the Present Day’ (London: Labour Market Statistics Group, Central Statistical Office, 1996) Special Feature Prepared by the Government Statistical Service.

For a good contextual discussion of these concerns, see A. Gamble, Britain in Decline: Economic Policy, Political Strategy, and the British State , 4th edn (London: MacMillan, 1994).

Castles and Kosack (n.41), at Ch IX.

Sivanandan (n.23); B. Hepple, Race, Jobs and the Law in Britain (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 1968), at Ch 4; R. Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain (London: Verso, 2017), at 238–40.

Ramdin (n.45).

Ibid, 234–5.

R. Lewis, ‘The Historical Development of Labour Law’ (1976) 14 British Journal of Industrial Relations 1.

Sivanandan (n.23).

Lord Wedderburn, The Worker and the Law , 3rd edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986), at Ch 4.

Lord Donovan (Chairman), ‘Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, 1965–1968. Report Presented to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty’ (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1968).

O. Kahn-Freund, ‘Labour Law’, Selected Writings (London: Stevens, 1978). For an insightful discussion of how Kahn-Freund conceptualised the role of the state, see R. Dukes, ‘Otto Kahn-Freund and Collective Laissez-Faire: An Edifice Without a Keystone’ (2009) 72 Modern Law Review 220.

J. Wrench, ‘Unequal Comrades: Trade Unions, Equal Opportunity and Racism’ (Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, 1986) Policy Papers in Ethnic Relations 5; E. J. B. Rose and Others, ‘Colour & Citizenship: A Report on British Race Relations’ (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1969), at Ch 19; S. Virdee, ‘Racism and Resistance in British Trade Unions, 1948–79’ in P. Alexander and R. Halpern (eds), Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the USA and Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2000).

Wrench (n.53).

J. Hughes, ‘The British Economy: Crisis and Structural Change’ (1963) 21 New Left Review .

R. Trust (1982) cited in R. Miles, Racism & Migrant Labour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), at 163. Immigration policy was enacted through a mixture of legislative and administrative rule changes. For example, the entry of partners and dependents was often regulated through changes to administrative rules.

Patel (n.34).

J. Clarke and J. Salt, ‘Work Permits and Foreign Labour in the UK: A Statistical Review’ [2003] Labour Market Trends 563.

There were strikes by female migrant workers in 1972 (Mansfield Hosiery Mills Ltd), 1974 (Imperial Typewriters) and 1976 (Grunwick)—see S. Anitha and R. Pearson, Striking Women: Struggles & Strategies of South Asian Women Workers From Grunwick to Gate Gourmet (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2018).

On Asian youth movements—see A. Ramamurthy, Black Star: Britain’s Asian Youth Movements (London: Pluto Press, 2013). On the IWA, see J. DeWitt, Indian Workers’ Associations in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). On CARD, see B. W. Heineman, Politics of the Powerless: Study of the Campaign against Racial Discrimination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).

See Heineman (n.63).

El-Enany (n.35), at 106–7.

See, eg, J. Solomos, ‘From Equal Opportunity to Anti-Racism: Racial Inequality and the Limits of Reform’ (London: Birkbeck Public Policy Centre, Birkbeck College, 1989) Policy Papers in Ethnic Relations 17.

B. Hepple, ‘Have Twenty-Five Years of the Race Relations Acts in Britain Been a Failure?’ in B. Hepple and E. M. Szyszczak (eds), Discrimination: The Limits of Law (London: Mansell, 1992), 20.

C. O’Cinneide, ‘The Commission for Equality and Human Rights: A New Institution for New and Uncertain Times’ (2007) 36 Industrial Law Journal 141; B. Hepple, ‘The New Single Equality Act in Britain’ (2010) 5 Equal Rights Review 11.

N. Kaldor, ‘How Monetarism Failed’ (1985) May–June Challenge 4.

M. Moran, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: The USA, UK and Japan (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), at Ch 3.

K. Albertson and P. Stepney, ‘1979 and All That: A 40-Year Reassessment of Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy on Her Own Terms’ (2020) 44 Cambridge Journal of Economics 319.

P. Davies and M. Freedland, Labour Legislation and Public Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), at Chs 9 and 10.

Ibid., at Ch 9.

K. D. Ewing, J. Hendy and C. Jones (eds), A Manifesto for Labour Law: Towards a Comprehensive Revision of Workers’ Rights (London: Institute of Employment Rights, 2016), at 4.

Thompson (n.28); Vidal (n.28).

Denman and McDonald (n.42).

J. Lovering, ‘A Perfunctory Sort of Post-Fordism: Economic Restructuring and Labour Market Segmentation in Britain in the 1980s’ (1990) 4 Work, Employment and Society 9.

P. Davies and M. Freedland, Towards a Flexible Labour Market: Labour Legislation and Regulation Since the 1990s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), at 11. See also H. Collins, ‘Independent Contractors and the Challenge of Vertical Disintegration to Employment Protection Laws’ (1990) 10 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 353.

For a good summary of the various theories of labour market dualism/segmentation, see J. Peck, Workplace: The Social Regulation of Labour Markets (New York: The Guilford Press, 1996), at Ch. 3 and S. Deakin, ‘Addressing Labour Market Segmentation: The Role of Labour Law’ (Governance and Tripartism Department, International Labour Office 2013) Working Paper 52.

C. Brown, Black and White: The Third PSI Survey (London: Heinemann, 1984).

‘International Migration: A Recent History—Office for National Statistics’ (15 January 2015). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/internationalmigrationarecenthistory/2015-01-15 (accessed 1 May 2021).

El-Enany (n.35), at 126. For the increased numbers, see J. Salt and V. Bauer, ‘Managing Foreign Labour Immigration to the UK: Government Policy and Outcomes Since 1945’ (London: UCL Migration Research Unit, 2020).

Clarke and Salt (n.60).

J. Salt and R. T. Kitching, ‘Labour Migration and the Work Permit System in the United Kingdom’ (1990) 28 International Migration 267.

P. W. Walsh, ‘Asylum and Refugee Resettlement in the UK’ (The Migration Observatory 2021) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migration-to-the-uk-asylum/ (accessed 1 May 2021).

See, eg, R. Heffernan, New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (London: Palgrave, 2001).

For a distillation of ‘Third Way’ thinking, see H. Collins, ‘Is There a Third Way in Labour Law?’ in J. Conaghan, R. M. Fischl and K. Klare (eds), Labour Law in an Era of Globalization: Transformative Practices & Possibilities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a discussion of the distance between the practice of New Labour and the ideology of Third Way, see S. Fredman, ‘The Ideology of New Labour Law’ in C. Barnard, S. Deakin and G. Morris (eds), The Future of Labour Law: Liber Amicorum Sir Bob Hepple (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004).

‘Fairness at Work. Presented to Parliament by the President of the Board of Trade by Command of Her Majesty’ (1998) Cm 3968.

For extended analyses of New Labour’s reform to the legal institutions of the labour market, see T. Novitz and P. Skidmore, Fairness at Work (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001); A. Bogg, The Democratic Aspects of Trade Union Recognition (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004).

Deakin (n.80).

B. Anderson and M. Ruhs, ‘Migrant Workers: Who Needs Them? A Framework for the Analysis of Staff Shortages, Immigration, and Public Policy’ in M. Ruhs and B. Anderson (eds), Who Needs Migrant Workers? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

W. Sommerville, Immigration under New Labour (Bristol: Policy Press, 2007). For a sophisticated account of the economic, ideological and institutional factors leading to New Labour’s position on immigration, see E. Consterdine, Labour’s Immigration Policy: The Making of the Migration State (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

M. Fernández-Reino, ‘Migrants in the UK Labour Market: An Overview’ (The Migration Observatory 2021) Briefing. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-labour-market-an-overview/ .

N. Lillie and I. Greer, ‘Industrial Relations, Migration, and Neoliberal Politics: The Case of the European Construction Sector’ (2007) 35 Politics & Society 551; C. Woolfson, ‘Labour Migration, Neoliberalism and Ethno-Politics in the New Europe: The Latvian Case’ (2009) 41 Antipode 952.

Salt and Bauer (n.83).

M. Zou, ‘Employer Demand for “Skilled” Migrant Workers: Regulating Admission under the United Kingdom’s Tier 2 (General) Visa’ in J. Howe and R. Owens (eds), Temporary Labour Migration in the Global Era: The Regulatory Challenges (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2016).

M. Sobolewska and R. Ford, Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), at 30.

Office of National Statistics, ‘Unemployment Rate (Aged 16 and Over, Seasonally Adjusted)’ ( Labour Market Statistics Time Series ). https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/timeseries/mgsx/lms (accessed 19 May 2021).

B. Anderson, ‘Migration, Immigration Controls and the Fashioning of Precarious Workers’ (2010) 24 Work, Employment and Society 300.

A. Lentin, ‘Cameron’s Immigration Hierarchy: Indians Good, Eastern Europeans Bad’ The Guardian (18 February 2013). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/cameron-immigration-indians-good >.

Anderson and Ruhs (n.92).

ERA 1996, s 108(1).

For an insightful discussion of how the illegality doctrine in relation to employment claims is likely to be treated under a situation of statutory illegality, see A. Bogg, ‘Irregular Migrants and Fundamental Social Rights: The Case of Back-Pay under the English Law on Illegality’ in B. Ryan (ed), Migrant Labour and the Reshaping of Employment Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, forthcoming).

P. Connor and J. S. Passel, ‘Europe’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population Peaks in 2016, Then Levels Off’ (Washington, DC: Pew Research Centre, 2019). https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/11/13/europes-unauthorised-immigrant-population-peaks-in-2016-then-levels-off/ .

D. Metcalf, United Kingdom Labour Market Enforcement Strategy 2018/19 (London: HM Government, 2018) Presented to Parliament pursuant to s 5 (1) of the Immigration Act 2016. https://www.webarchive.org.uk/access/resolve/20180522191539 or https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/705503/labour-market-enforcement-strategy-2018-2019-full-report.pdf (accessed 1 May 2021).

C. Barnard, ‘Enforcement of Employment Rights by Migrant Workers in the UK: The Case of EU-8 Nationals’ in Cathryn Costello and Mark Freedland (eds), Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2014).

A. Geddes and S. Scott, ‘UK Food Businesses’ Reliance on Low-Wage Migrant Labour: A Case of Choice or Constraint’ in B. Anderson and M. Ruhs (eds), Who Needs Migrant Workers? Labour Shortages, Immigration, and Public Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

A. Batnitzky and L. McDowell, ‘The Emergence of an “Ethnic Economy”? The Spatial Relationships of Migrant Workers in London’s Health and Hospitality Sectors’ (2013) 36 Ethnic and Racial Studies 1997.

F. van Hooren, ‘Varieties of Migrant Care Work: Comparing Patterns of Migrant Labour in Social Care’ (2012) 22 Journal of European Social Policy 133.

J. Portes, ‘Immigration and the UK Economy After Brexit’ (Bonn: IZA Institute of Labor Economics, 2021) Discussion Paper Series.

D. Strauss, ‘Surge in Hiring as Hospitality Reopens Adds to Pressure on Labour Market’ [2021] Financial Times . https://www.ft.com/content/98c3a781-7661-41a7-b6a3-4ff9a0a10b9b .

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Impact of Migration on Social Well-Being of Women Labourers in Bhubaneswar, Odisha

Author: Nupur UO Pattanaik, [email protected] Department: Sociology University: Ravenshaw University, India Supervisor: Prof. Anita Dash Year of completion: 2018 Language of dissertation: English

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Labour and migration have always been an important topic of research and discussions. ERIA dives deep into it through a range of sub-topics surrounding labour and migration, such as labour mobility, employment, rural development, social welfare, labour adjustment management, migrant networks, and social protections. Furthermore, ERIA also works on problems related to labour and migration such as gender wage gap and inequality.

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Advancing social justice, promoting decent work

Ilo is a specialized agency of the united nations, highlights from nairobi's labour migration breakfast session.

Operationalizing the National Steering Committee and the Technical Coordinating Committee on the implementation of the Global Labour Market Strategy on Labour Migration.

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Migration rose by one-third last year to lift Australia’s population by a record 659,000

The net annual rise was revealed as Labor signalled moves to reduce migration arrivals

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Australia welcomed more than 2,000 migrants a day in the year to September, helping to swell the country’s population by a record 659,800 , reigniting political debate about measures to reduce arrivals.

Migration arrivals rose by a third compared with the previous year to hit 765,900, driven by international students and workers on temporary visas, while departures slipped to 217,100.

The record net annual increase of almost 550,000 comes despite the Albanese government’s expectation to bring migration down from 510,000 to 375,000 a year by June 2024, which was laid out in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook. Net migration in the September 2023 quarter hit 145,200, close to government expectations.

The Coalition has taken up the politically charged issue as a talking point, with the shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, telling reporters in Canberra that “record numbers of people are causing a housing crisis, they’re causing a rental crisis”.

The anti-racism activist group Democracy in Colour denounced the comments, with campaigner Jarrod Tan saying it is “irresponsible” to play the “migrant blame game for a housing crisis that is decades in the making”.

Tehan denied demonising migrants for political gain, but argued that immigration levels must be “sustainable” and “in-sync” with housing supply.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, told parliament in question time that the data “doesn’t take into account … the quite substantial action” the government has taken to put “downward pressure” on net overseas migration.

In December the government announced it would enact reforms recommended by the migration review including raising English language requirements and implementing a “genuine student” test for international students.

Ahead of the ABS data release the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, announced on Wednesday the government would enact some of these migration-cutting policies starting this Saturday, including the imposition of “no further stay” conditions on visitor visas to prevent them being exploited by those who should be on student visas.

The employment minister, Tony Burke, deflected attacks by noting that opposition leader, Peter Dutton, had previously publicly advocated “for higher rates of immigration”, including after the September 2022 jobs and skills summit.

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Businesses in search of skilled labour say the migration system should not get too restrictive, with KPMG’s head of migration services, Mark Wright, encouraging the government to prioritise productivity.

“An informed discussion around Australia’s migration program should centre on the skills Australia requires, rather than simply the numbers which make up our overall migration program,” he said.

High population growth risks forcing up the unemployment rate, as jobs become increasingly scarce, though Thursday’s fall in the unemployment rate indicates the jobs market is comfortably absorbing migrant workers.

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“This is adding to the supply of labour and we need to add around 35k of jobs each month to keep the unemployment rate steady,” the Commonwealth Bank senior economist Belinda Allen said.

The economy added 116,600 jobs – two-thirds of them full-time roles – in February, compared with economists’ forecast for a net gain of 40,000 positions.

High population growth is in line with the Reserve Bank’s estimation in its February statement on monetary policy that Australia’s population would grow by more than 530,000 a year by June 2024.

While net overseas migration increased more in the September 2023 quarter than the preceding June quarter, it remained lower than the current record of 157,684, from the March quarter of 2023.

“Typically the March and September quarters see a larger increase in net overseas migrants due to the start of the university semester,” Allen said.

Thursday’s data also revealed substantial interstate migration in the year to September 2023, with 33,000 people leaving New South Wales and 32,000 people moving to Queensland and a further 10,000 moving to Western Australia.

Australia’s total population hit 26.8 million in September, according to the new ABS figures, though the bureau’s population clock estimated in January that the figure has already reached 27 million.

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NLC Partners ILO On Role Of Trade Union In Labour Migration

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in partnership with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), has conducted training for trade union workers to enhance the role of trade unions in labour migration.

The training was focused on gender mainstreaming to safeguard migrant workers in Nigeria.

The three day workshop was aimed at sensitiSing migrant recruitment advisors.

Mr. Emmanuel Ugboaja, the NLC General Secretary, stated that the programme was beneficial for female migrants to promote decent work.

Mrs. Rita Goyit, NLC Head of Youth and Women, who represented Ugboaja, highlighted the training’s goals, focusing on raising awareness and advocating for fair recruitment practices and decent work for migrant labourers.

Emphasising NLC’s dedication, the general secretary reaffirmed their commitment to advancing migration governance by ensuring the welfare of migrant workers and integrating gender perspectives for enhanced migration practices.

“We are ever ready and shall continue to support all initiatives, actions and collaborations with all actors, especially critical stakeholders in the world of workers.

“We will support them in their various pragmatic initiatives deployed to assist migrant workers and members of their families.

“There is no better way to do this than to actively carry out activities, to position NLC affiliates, to promote decent work for migrant workers and gender mainstreaming,” he observed.

Ugboaja commended the ILO for their commitment, support and determination to organise the training.

“We reassure you of our commitment, readiness and availability in the struggle for the defence of the collective interest of workers,” he assured.

The ILO Senior Specialist Workers’ Activities Programme, Mrs Inviolata Chinyangarara, said the programme, funded by the FAIRWAY project aimed at understanding the key concept of gender mainstreaming in labour migration governance.

“Majority of women migrate because of discrimination, gender-based violence and lack of access to livelihood,” she stated.

She identified other issues that influenced women’s migration including; working as housemaids, entertainers, rape and sexual harassment among others.

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Inclusion of Interstate Migrant Workers in Kerala and Lessons for India

• Published: 12 November 2020
• Volume 63 , pages 1065–1086, ( 2020 )

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• Benoy Peter 1 ,
• Shachi Sanghvi 1 &
• Vishnu Narendran 1  

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An estimated 3.5 million interstate migrant workers have become an indispensable part of Kerala’s economy. The state also offers the highest wages for migrant workers for jobs in the unorganised sector in the entire Indian subcontinent. Further, the state has evolved several measures for the inclusion of the workers and was able to effectively respond to their distress during the national lockdown. This paper examines labour migration to Kerala, key measures by the government to promote the social security of the workers and the state’s response to the distress of migrant workers during lockdown, by synthesising the available secondary evidence. The welfare measures as well as interventions initiated by the state are exemplary and promising given the intent and provisions. However, some of them do not appear to have consideration of the grassroots requirements and implementation mechanisms to enhance access. As a result, the policy intent and substantial investments have not yielded the expected results. The state’s effective response to the distress of workers during the lockdown emanates from its overall disaster preparedness and resilience achieved from confronting with two consecutive state-wide natural disasters and a public health emergency in the immediate past. While the government has played a strategic role through policy imperative and ensuring a synergistic response, the data presented by the state indicate a much larger but invisible role played by the employers and civil society in providing food and shelter to workers.

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1 Introduction

Ahead in demographic transition among Indian states, Kerala has evolved as one of the most attractive destinations for migrant workers from the rest of India. The state offers the best wage rates for workers in the unorganised sector in the country, manifold compared to most other states (Labour Bureau 2020 ). The state, which registered replacement level of fertility three decades of ago, has two districts already registering negative population growth (GOK 2019a ). Interstate migrant workers have become an indispensable part of the state’s economy. Almost all economic sectors that require arduous physical labour are dependent on migrant workers. This also includes sectors such as marine fishing that requires highly skilled labour. Estimated to be about 3.5 million in 2018, migrant workers hail from all over India (GOK et al. 2018 ). While the rest of the states struggled to address the distress of migrant workers during the national lockdown to arrest the COVID-19 pandemic, Kerala was able to ensure food and shelter to workers through a decentralised response. The state, which is still known as a remittance economy where migration from Kerala directly or indirectly impacts every household in the state, is also known for measures taken for the welfare of interstate migrant workers it receives (Planning Commission 2008 ). This paper examines labour migration to Kerala, key measures by the Government of Kerala (GOK) to promote the social security of the migrant workers and inclusiveness of the response of the state to the distress of migrant workers during lockdown, by synthesising the available secondary evidence.

2 Migration from Neighbouring States

Since its formation in 1956, the state has attracted migrant labourers from the neighbouring states, particularly from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. During the period from 1961 to 1991, workers from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka complemented the native workers in filling up the requirement of the blue collar labour force (Kumar 2016 ). There were specific sectors where migrant labourers were largely absorbed including the plantations, the brick kilns and work requiring digging up. In Wayanad, Kannur and Kasaragod districts, workers from Karnataka catered to the labour requirement, while in all the districts, workers from Tamil Nadu were available. Migrants from Tamil Nadu have played a key role in the construction sector in Kerala from the mid-1970s. Limited availability of employment in both agricultural and industrial sectors in Tamil Nadu, coupled with the spurt of construction activity that arose due to the high inflow of remittances from Keralites working in the Middle East, had triggered such migration (Anand 1986 ). The significant difference in wages and the sustained demand in the construction sector resulted in heavy migration from Tamil Nadu. By 1990s, Kochi, the construction hub and commercial capital of Kerala, witnessed heavy migration of labourers from Tamil Nadu. A settlement of migrant workers from Tamil Nadu evolved at Vathuruthy in Kochi (Peter and Narendran 2017 ). In 2007, workers from 13 districts in Tamil Nadu, predominantly from Dindigul, Tiruchirappalli, Theni and Madurai, worked in Kochi city (Surabhi and Kumar 2007 ). Three-fifths of the migrants in Thiruvananthapuram district in 2007 were from Tamil Nadu (Rajan and Zachariah 2007 ).

3 Migration from the Rest of India

Labour migration from beyond Southern India started significantly with the arrival of migrants from Odisha to work in the Timber Industry in Ernakulam district. Migrants from Odisha, who arrived first, lived in the mill premises and worked hard even at odd hours and were content with whatever limited work was available and the free accommodation provided. Bhais , as the migrant workers from outside South India are popularly called, received higher wages than what they could earn elsewhere in India and enjoyed the work and the peaceful life in Kerala. The timber entrepreneurs in Perumbavoor preferred migrants from eastern India over Tamilians because they came single, were less expensive, more subservient, hardworking and available, relatively, throughout the year (Peter and Gupta 2012 ). The emergence of Kanjikode in Palakkad during the nineties as a hub of iron and steel industry led to sourcing of workers from Bihar. The work required skill and constant exposure to intense heat with no local takers (Peter and Narendran 2017 ). The Supreme Court of India banned forest-based plywood industries in Assam in 1996. This resulted in the collapse of plywood industry in Assam which had the monopoly in this sector in India, and the rise of Kerala, which depended on rubber wood for plywood production, as a major hub of plywood production in India. Migration from Odisha increased significantly, and there emerged a new stream of workers from Assam, particularly workers skilled in plywood production. Following their footsteps, unskilled workers from West Bengal arrived (Peter and Gupta 2012 ). Gradually, migrants from several other states arrived taking up any kind of unskilled work.

While most of the labour migration was driven by the social network of the workers, multinational companies too mobilised workers from states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal using intermediaries, to work in their projects in Kerala. The GOK also noted the increase in the number of workers from states such as West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (GOK 2009 ). A study, covering four cities and six sectors of employment in Kerala, found that West Bengal and Tamil Nadu were the major source states of migrant workers in Kerala in 2012 (Moses and Rajan 2012 ). Nearly 8500 children from migrant families were enrolled in government-funded schools in Kerala during the academic year 2019–2020 (Kuttikrishnan 2019 ).

4 Estimate of Migrant Workers

Robust estimates of migrant workers in Kerala are currently not available. A study commissioned by the Department of Labour and Skills (DOLS), GOK, estimated that there were over 2.5 million interstate migrant workers in the state in 2013. The net annual addition per year according to the study conducted by the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT) was 1,82,000 migrants (Narayana et al. 2013 ). Based on this, it was projected that the state has nearly 3.5 million interstate migrant workers in 2018 (GOK et al. 2018 ). However, the survey based on long-distance train entering Kerala did not consider those from the neighbouring states such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, who come using other means of transport. That way, the GIFT estimate could even be underestimated. Irrespective of the debate on the estimated number of migrant workers in the state, it is evident that such workers are present even in the remotest corners of the state. A Hindi service was available on Sundays in 2016 for the workers from Jharkhand at the church in Anakkampoyil, one of the remote corners of Kozhikode district (Peter and Narendran 2017 ).

5 Migration Corridors to Kerala

The increasing demand for workers to take up work that required heavy physical labour, coupled with the high wage rates compared to the rest of India, regular availability of employment and minimal avenues for employment in states which are experiencing a demographic dividend coincided by lack of employment opportunities, has resulted in the evolution of some of the longest labour migration corridors in India connecting Kerala with Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in addition to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. A study by Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID) documented migrants from 194 districts from across 25 Indian states/Union Territories working in Kerala during 2016–2017. More than four-fifths of these districts belonged to eight Indian states: Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south, Uttar Pradesh in the north, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal in the east and Assam in the northeast India. Nearly 60 per cent of the source districts belonged to the east and northeast India (Peter and Narendran 2017 ). District-level corridors have also emerged indicating the strong influence of social network in migration. Table  1 provides a list of corridors evolved between eastern Indian states and Kerala. The growing informalisation of work has resulted in almost all industries including public sector entities engaging migrant workers directly or indirectly.

The profile of workers varied by native place of the worker, location of employment as well as the sector in which he/she is engaged. The preferences of industries coupled with gender, social network as well as the skillset of the migrant by and large decided the profile of the migrants in a particular industry. Traditional fishers from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal worked in the marine fishing sector, expert artisans from Saharanpur of Uttar Pradesh were engaged in the furniture sector, young girls from eastern and north eastern states were mostly employed in the fish processing as well as garment and apparel industries, young Adivasi couples from Jharkhand were preferred by the tea plantations, men from north Karnataka and Assam worked in the laterite mines, and the hospitality industry preferred workers from Northeast India, Darjeeling and Nepal (Peter and Narendran 2017 ).

Akin to the rest of India, the temporary migrants in Kerala also belonged to socially and educationally disadvantaged poor agrarian communities, whose livelihood opportunities in their native places have been severely constrained by a multitude of factors including climate change, disasters like drought and floods, conflicts and oppression. Among the 194 districts in India from where migrant workers have flocked to Kerala during 2016–2017, 33 were among the top 100 districts in India with the largest number of Scheduled Tribe population as per the 2011 Census. Also, among the top five districts in India with the largest Scheduled Caste population, four have evolved as district-level corridors of labour migration to Kerala (Peter and Narendran 2017 ). Over half of the interstate migrant workers in Ernakulam districts belonged to religious minority communities (CMID 2020 ). Typical of long-distance migration, single men dominated the migration stream from eastern India, while single men, women, couples and families came from neighbouring states.

6 Measures by the State for the Welfare of Workers

Kerala is the first Indian state to enact a social security scheme for migrant workers (Srivastava 2020 ). The state’s concern in the welfare of the interstate migrant workers is reflected in the way it constituted a Working Group on Labour Migration under the 13th Five-Year Plan deliberations (2017–2022). The state also organised several national and state-level deliberations on the challenges faced by the workers in the state. The Fourth Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) evaluated the implementation of the welfare schemes for migrant workers as a priority. There are several measures taken by various departments for the inclusion of migrant workers. The Department of Education since 2008 has been engaged in promotion of inclusive education for children of migrant workers. Educational volunteers who speak the mother tongues of the migrant children have been appointed by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in select schools in areas with high concentration of migrant children. The State Literacy Mission, from 2017 onwards, implements a programme to teach the workers Hindi and Malayalam. Kudumbashree, the state’s initiative for empowerment of women and poverty eradication, has initiated efforts to bring migrant women also into its fold. In addition to the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) prevention interventions, the Department of Health and Family Welfare, through National Health Mission (NHM), has introduced Link Workers in 2020 to enhance access to healthcare for migrant families. Resourceful migrant workers were recruited and trained to provide health information and connect the migrants to services in their own language coordinating with the other frontline workers of the department. The Department of social justice has started setting up mobile creches to take care of kids of migrant workers. From January 2020, the Civil Supplies Department has activated interstate portability benefits to workers from select states although it currently excludes West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar from where over 80 per cent of the workers come (GOK 2020a ).

The DOLS, which offers a host of welfare measures for the migrant workers, directly implements three worker facilitation centres in the state for migrants, one each in the south, central and north regions. In addition to the Interstate Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) (ISMW) Act, 1979, the central act that provides for the social security of interstate migrant workers in India, the state, in 2010, launched an Interstate Migrant Workers Welfare Scheme (ISMWWS-2010) which has several provisions for the welfare of the migrant workers. Aawaz Insurance Scheme 2016 and Apna Ghar Housing for migrant workers are the two other major initiatives of DOLS. The salient features of the state schemes are outlined below.

7 Interstate Migrant Workers Welfare Scheme 2010

Under the ISMWWS, a separate fund was created under the Kerala Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (KBOCWWB) for the welfare of migrant workers. A worker in the age group 18 to 60 years can enrol under the scheme after completion of one month from his/her arrival in the state, paying a renewable annual membership fee of ₹30. GOK contributes a sum equal to three times of the annual receipts through membership to the fund, and a similar contribution is also earmarked from the KBOCWWB. The scheme mandates every employer in the state who engage interstate migrant workers to ensure that such workers are registered under the scheme. Table  2 summarises the key benefits under the scheme as updated in 2019.

8 Apna Ghar Housing Scheme

The Apna Ghar migrant housing project was launched in 2019 by the DOLS with the intention to provide affordable rental housing to migrant workers in the state. Equipped with dormitory style rooms, cooking and dining facilities, drying areas and toilets, this migrant hostel is available to the migrant workers at a subsidised rent through their employer. A bed can be availed by migrant workers at a rent of ₹1000 per month (Desai 2019 ). DOLS has constructed one such 620-bed hostel in a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Kanjikode, Palakkad, and intends to construct such hostels in districts across the state, to start with Ernakulam and Kozhikode.

9 Aawaz Insurance Scheme

Launched by the DOLS in 2016, Aawaz is an insurance package designed exclusively for migrant workers. A migrant worker can get enrolled for free under Aawaz and avail a health insurance cover of ₹15,000 and an accidental insurance cover of rupees two lakhs (GOK 2020b ). Registration is done through the DOLS facilitation centre and also through special outreach campaigns. The registration process is outsourced to a private entity. Fingerprints and iris scans of the workers are taken, and an identity card is issued. Over five lakhs Aawaz cards have been issued to interstate workers during the period 2016 to 2020. The claims are managed by DOLS as an assurance model.

10 A Critical Review of the State of Access to DOLS Schemes

An analysis of the schemes being implemented by DOLS reveals that despite the policy measures, the workers have not been able to benefit substantially from any of these schemes as observed by Srivastava ( 2020 ). Since majority of workers who come to Kerala are not recruited by a contractor from their native states, the Interstate Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) (ISMW) Act, 1979, does not apply to them in its current form. Most of those who are recruited at the native state and brought by the contractors to Kerala also are not registered as the data for the period 2012–2017 reveal (Table  3 ). The registrations increased from 6833 during 2012–2013 to 11,011 during 2014–2015 and subsequently declined to almost half of it in 2016–2017 (GOK 2018 ).

The Administrative Reforms Commission which reviewed the implementation of the Interstate ISMWWS observed that the scheme has become ‘defunct’ with only 2741 registrations during 2016–2017, whereas the state was estimated to have over 2.5 million interstate migrants working in Kerala (GOK 2018 ). Figure  1 provides the trends in registration under ISMWWS during 2012–2017. During the five-year period from 2012 to 2017, a total of ₹12.3 lakhs was spent as benefits to migrant workers, which was only 14 per cent of the total expenditure during the period and only 1.3 per cent of the total available funds (GOK 2018 ). The benefits disbursed were mostly related to compensation towards death or repatriation of the body of the workers who had died.

Registration of interstate migrant workers under ISMWWS 2010, Kerala, by Category: 2012–2017. Source: Welfare to Rights: Implementation of Select Legislations: A Review. ARC, 2018

Poor demand creation has been one of the major reasons for the failure of the scheme. A study in Ernakulam district during December 2019–January 2020 revealed that none of the 419 workers interviewed had heard about the scheme (CMID 2020 ). The scheme was nested under the KBOCWWB without deployment of additional staff. There were other barriers also such as the paper work required including the certification by employer and capping of monthly wage to ₹7500. Besides, the introduction of Aawaz scheme in 2016, which was in fact a duplication of a subset of the benefits under ISMWWS, further weakened the implementation of the scheme. Although as a welfare scheme for migrant workers, Aawaz got popularity in the media, majority of the migrant workers in the state are unaware about its existence (Sreekumar 2019 ). Introduction of Aawaz appears to be more a surveillance measure collecting the biometric data than with the real intent of providing health and accidental insurance since ISMWWS already provided these services along with a host of other benefits for the workers and their family members. Currently, the services under Aawaz are available only at government health facilities. None of the migrants who had experienced hospitalisation during 2019–2020 reported to have benefited from Aawaz, but had managed it from their own pocket or with the support of their employer (CMID 2020 ). One of the key reasons for the low awareness and uptake of the schemes is the human resource constraints of DOLS to promote awareness and enrolment. The employers are also hesitant to get all their workers registered fearing that this might result in documentation of the number of persons engaged by establishment attracting legal action to provide them with employee benefits (Sreekumar 2019 ).

While the housing infrastructure created under the Apna Ghar scheme meets the requirement of single male migrants, instead of addressing the housing needs of the most vulnerable workers such as the footloose workers or migrant families, the scheme subsidises the cost of accommodation of private enterprises and helps them improve their profit margins (Desai 2019 ). There is only one such facility functioning in the entire state offering a total of only 620 beds in the state. Besides, accommodation arrangements through employer keep the workers confined to the employer. Given the Kerala context, instead of segregating the migrant workers through exclusive housing for migrants, the state should promote mainstream living facilitating the workers’ access to affordable housing leveraging the open market where state plays the role of regulator than being a provider.

11 Collective Bargaining and Employee Welfare

Migrant workers in Kerala have so far not benefited from the immense social capital gained by the trade unions in Kerala. Even in 2020, more than 90 per cent of the workers are not part of any trade union which deprives them of the power of collective bargaining (CMID 2020 ). Unprotected by labour unions, they are often exploited and subjected to unfair practices at the work place. Wages received by the migrant workers are lesser than the wages received by locals for the same work (Parida et al. 2020 ). Differential wages and the role of powerful labour unions in perpetuating wage discrimination and labour segmentation have created a deep divide in the work force of Kerala (Prasad-Aleyamma 2017 ). Just like most informal workers in the rest of the country, most of the migrant workers in Kerala also do not enjoy the employee welfare measures such as employees’ state insurance (ESI), provident fund (PF) or pension. They are engaged directly or through contractors through verbal agreements without being on the rolls, under piece rates or other arrangements and are paid in cash. In several instances, employers have avoided registering workers with DOLS to reduce the liabilities and benefits they are to provide to the workers (Krishnakumar 2019 ).

12 Othering of Migrant Workers

As a state which substantially benefits from its diaspora, Kerala acknowledges the contribution of migrants and has constituted Loka Kerala Sabha, a platform that provides the diaspora an opportunity to contribute to policy formulation of the state (GOK 2019a ). Also, the state has an exclusive department for the welfare of its nearly three million non-Keralites in the name of Department of Non-Keralites Affairs (NORKA) directly under the Chief Minister. However, there is no comparable institutional mechanism at the state level for the welfare of the interstate migrant workers who are larger in number compared to the Kerala diaspora. Also, by referring migrant workers as Athithi Thozhilali (guest worker) in documents, including government orders, the state officially promotes othering, reminding everyone that the workers who are Indian citizens with the fundamental right to work, reside and travel anywhere in the country, ‘do not belong to Kerala’ and are expected to return upon the completion of work. Although the state glorifies this as treating the workers as state’s ‘guests’, this tokenism essentially permeates xenophobia presenting the workers as ‘less privileged ones’ compared to Malayalis . At the same time, the Malayali workers elsewhere are referred to as Pravasi Malayali , which essentially means migrant Malayali and not as ‘guest workers from Kerala’. This othering promoted by the state is so pervasive that it has penetrated deep into psyche of migrant workers, some of whom introduce themselves as ‘I am a Bhai’ . Although Bhai and Annan have the literal meaning ‘brother’, in Kerala these have become synonyms to migrant identities from north and south India. Most of the Malayali employers call their workers by these names, and a large share of employers do not even know the real names of their workers.

13 The Impact of COVID Pandemic and the State Response

In the absence of studies, this section of the paper banks on CMID’s grassroots experience in the state including operating a multilingual helpline for distressed migrant workers in the state supplemented by government documents available in the public domain as well as newspaper reports.

The national lockdown on 25 March 2020 to arrest the spread of the COVID-19 infection had a catastrophic impact on the migrant workers in the country. While the country came to a standstill, the stigma and consequent discrimination faced by the migrant workers was visibly prominent. Abandoned by employers, livelihoods lost, evicted from their residences and deprived of social security, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers and their families, including children, were pushed to the streets in India’s urban centres (Caritas India 2020 ; Jan Sahas 2020 ; Stranded Workers’ Action Network 2020 ). In the absence of transport, thousands of migrants were forced to walk towards their homes hundreds of kilometres away. Several of them died on the way unable to cope with the arduous journey and hunger. While the rest of the country witnessed such a plight of migrant workers and the state governments struggled to manage the crisis, the situation in Kerala was substantially better. In this section of the paper, the authors examine the impact of the COVID pandemic on migrant workers in the state and the Kerala’s response to address the challenges they faced.

The first COVID-19 case in India was identified in Kerala on 30 January 2020 (Perappadan 2020 ). With more cases surfacing during early March in the state, distancing and other measures by the state and people impacted migrants who worked in sectors which involved substantial public interaction. The hotels and restaurants lost business and had to be eventually closed down, resulting in loss of employment of migrants (Narayanan 2020 ; Smitha 2020 ). Many employers asked their workers to return home till situation improved (Gram Vikas and CMID 2020 ). The footloose labourers were another group who were impacted from the initial days onwards as they could not assemble at the junctions seeking work since crowds were discouraged. Besides, the demand for work also declined steeply as the potential employers feared that hiring migrant workers would put them at risk of infection from the workers. Travel also eventually became difficult. These impacted workers from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal particularly who formed the largest proportion of footloose labourers in the state. Beauty parlours, saloons and malls also had fewer visitors impacting the livelihoods of workers. As a result, by the middle of March, the footloose workers and those who worked in the hotel and restaurants began to return to native places (Kuttappan 2020 ). Many had to hurriedly leave without obtaining the salary they had entrusted with the employers. There were also workers who wished to return but had to stay back as their native families had substantial debts to be repaid or their families solely survived on remittances from Kerala (Gram Vikas and CMID 2020 ).

With the lockdown on 25 March 2020, everyone except those who worked in essential services lost employment. The announcement of lockdown panicked the workers and their families at the native place. During the initial days, access to food was a challenge, particularly for the footloose labourers in the absence of an employer to take care of their food expenses (Vineeth 2020 ). The Local Self-Governments (LSGs) delegated the provision of food to employers and those who gave houses/rooms on rent to workers (GOK 2020c ). However, given the mobility constraints, large number of workers, the need to feed them thrice a day, this was something the house owners could not afford to or manage. The community kitchens set up by the LSGs initially did not provide free food to migrant workers (GOK 2020d ). Four-fifths of calls to CMID’s Bandhu helpline for migrant workers during the period 30 March to 11 April 2020 were seeking help for obtaining food. Footnote 2 Migrants who had brought families to Kerala were affected severely compared to those who were single. While the food-related challenges eventually subsided, there were also workers who had to request their native family to send money to buy provisions/food. At many places the supply was insufficient given the requirement (Koshy 2020a ). Although government gave provisions, at several places, the workers struggled to obtain cooking fuel and other ingredients in the absence of money. Very few workers endeavoured to walk to their native places from Kerala although Idukki and Malappuram witnessed workers walking to Tamil Nadu and workers were documented attempting to walk to Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka from Kannur (Emmanuel 2020 ; Bhat 2020 ).

Messages were also in circulation that trains are being organised by government for the return of workers. Amidst such confusions, in Paippad near Kottayam where large number of footloose labourers lived, thousands of workers assembled in the streets seeking support to go home (Nair 2020 ). Such protests also took place in Koothattukulam in Ernakulam district, Pattambi in Palakkad, Payyannur in Kannur district as well as in Malappuram (Subrahmani 2020 ; Mathrubhumi 2020 ; Shaju 2020 ). In Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district, the footloose labourers protested on the poor quality of food provided to them (Indian Express 2020 ).

As lockdown got extended, several workers got exhausted and wanted to go home. When Shramik trains were organised for workers to return home, migrants who lived outside major clusters struggled without information and started gathering at places where registrations happened on the previous day. While majority of the workers were from West Bengal, Assam and Tamil Nadu, most trains went to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha during the initial weeks. Also, the workers were asked to pay for the train fare which initially prevented the travel of those who had financial constraints (Joseph 2020 ; Koshy 2020b ). The families also found it challenging as they had to arrange money for the travel of multiple persons. Later, with the intervention of the Supreme Court, the workers were not charged (Scroll 2020 ). Rumours that workers will not be able to return for a year if they did not go immediately also panicked the workers. Workers in districts without railway stations such as Idukki found it difficult to access the Shramik trains, and some of them walked towards Ernakulam. This was eventually resolved by registration and organising transport.

In some places, workers were persuaded by local residents to return to native places and there were also sporadic cases of forced retention by employers (Kallungal 2020 ). Leveraging the opportunity around the ambiguity about the availability of Shramik trains, private bus operators organised trips charging ₹5000 to ₹6000 per person for trip to Odisha and ₹7000 to ₹9000 for travel to West Bengal and Assam (Abraham 2020 ). Since the Shramik Special trains were discontinued without providing opportunities for all workers who wanted to return home, a lot of workers had to borrow money to travel by air (Times of India 2020 ). Even in September 2020, migrant workers continued to be stranded in Kerala and were unable to go home since economical modes of transport were not available. Even with the unlock phase in progress, most of the workers who wished to return to Kerala have been unable to come back since train service from eastern India to Kerala has not resumed. With poverty and distress deepening in their native places, many workers have borrowed money to travel by air to Kerala. The advisory issued by the state necessitates migrant workers arriving Kerala without employers to undergo rapid COVID antigen tests at their own expenses (GOK 2020e ).

14 Response of the State to the Crises of Migrant Workers

Within fifteen days of the diagnosis of the first COVID-19 case in India, National Health Mission, Government of Kerala, working with NGOs prepared and disseminated COVID prevention messages in multiple languages. The DOLS on 18 March 2020 issued a circular designating state, district and subdistrict officials to conduct COVID-19 awareness programmes among migrant workers (GOK 2020f ). The circular instructed officials to identify and map areas where workers resided and also obtain WhatsApp contact details of at least one worker per area to create a group for disseminating information. Daily updates on actions and COVID symptoms among migrant workers were to be reported to the office of the Labour Commissioner. The Department of Local Self-Government (LSGD) on 20 March 2020 issued a detailed order on the roles and responsibilities of LSGs in COVID interventions and preventive measures to be undertaken. This order identified migrant workers as one of the vulnerable groups and emphasised the need to gather data about such workers in each LSG and impart the awareness programmes. The order mandated daily reports from each LSG on the actions taken (GOK 2020g ). Kerala was well prepared for a lockdown by the time the national lockdown was announced on 24 March 2020.

With the announcement of the national lockdown, the government quickly acted. The government entrusted the 1200 LSGs including the Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to ensure that the migrant workers had food and shelter working with Labour and Skills, Revenue, Civil Supplies, Health and Family Welfare and other relevant departments. Over 20,000 residential pockets identified by LSGD and DOLS were treated as in situ relief shelters of migrant workers, and some new camps were also set up to decongest the existed worker accommodations (GOK 2020b ; Nath No Date). In the absence of hotels and restaurants, community kitchens were opened at LSGs to provide food at a moderate cost of ₹20 per person to those who stayed in lodges, hostels or other facilities. Free food was provided from the community kitchens to the destitute, beggars, bedridden patients and the poor. However, initially migrant workers were initially not provided food free of cost (GOK 2020d ). The government not only resolved this eventually, but also attempted to provide food by providing food materials or engaging cooks from among the workers (Arnimesh 2020 ).

The employers were given instructions to take care of the food and accommodation of all their workers, and the house owners with migrant workers as tenants were directed to provide them food. The house owners were unable to do so since they could not afford to it and it was practically not feasible. However, given the penetration of mass media in Kerala, the instructions of Government of India (GOI) to provide salary to workers for the period lockdown and not to charge rent from tenants also helped in preventing large-scale evictions. Although salaries were not provided by most of the employers to the migrant workers, they provided the workers with food and shelter. At the same time, there were also marginal contractors who had struggled to feed migrants employed by them. Eventually, the community kitchens were instructed by the state to provide free food to the footloose migrant workers also (GOK 2020h ). The Civil Supplies Department provided rice/atta to migrant workers through with LSGD, DOLS and Department of Revenue (GOK 2020i ). The milk collected from farmers, that could not be processed, was distributed among migrant workers in addition to the children enrolled in anganwadis and pregnant women in the state (Nidheesh 2020 ).

On 28 March 2020, the Department of Health Services rolled out India’s first active mobile COVID screening unit for the migrant workers (Kuruvila 2020 ). The mobile clinic provided treatment to minor ailments as the workers were unable to seek healthcare coming out of the camps and also screened the migrant workers for COVID symptoms. Both the COVID helpline of the Department of Health Services and the helpline of the DOLS in Ernakulam district provided information services to distressed migrant workers in their mother tongue engaging the Link Workers (Ragesh 2020 ). Messages on COVID prevention were circulated in Assamese, Odia, Bengali, Hindi and Tamil. Home guards and volunteers who speak the language of the workers were also engaged to interact with the migrant workers to understand and address their grievances. Senior government officials such as the Labour Commissioner and State Police Chief who also were migrants aired messages in the mother tongue of workers which was circulated through the WhatsApp groups of migrant workers established by the DOLS. Many senior officials also visited migrant worker camps to comfort them. Recreational items including televisions and carom boards were also distributed in some camps so that the workers do not sit idle and distressed (Arnimesh 2020 ).

With GOI announcing Shramik special trains, the departments worked together to screen workers for COVID and facilitated their return to native places. The buses of Kerala Police and Kerala State Road Transport Corporation moved registered workers to various railway stations. Free food and water were provided to the workers who travelled to their native places in Shramik trains. When flagged, the DOLS intervened to release labourers who were forcefully detained by employers.

Collective efforts of the volunteers, activists, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), corporate entities, contractors, employers and those who lived in their neighbourhood also substantially supported migrant workers and families. Support included donation of food and provisions, masks and sanitisers, setting up multilingual helplines and public announcements, preventing forced detention, providing healthcare services, helping workers to travel to native states and connecting them to public services. Social media groups were also created at national level to facilitate interstate support to migrant workers.

15 An Analysis of the State Response to the Crisis of Migrants

Kerala’s exceptional and fairly inclusive response to the crisis faced by the interstate migrant workers due to the COVID pandemic stands out when compared to the ad hoc responses of other Indian states. The informed and decentralised response points to the overall disaster preparedness of the state firmly rooted in its experience and lessons learned from the rain disasters that had occurred in the state during 2018 and 2019 and also the Nipah virus outbreak in 2018. The state was devastated by the floods and landslides that had occurred in the state in 2019 where over 5000 landslides and landslips of various intensities shook the state and floods inundated more than 60 per cent of the villages in the state displacing 1.5 million people (Thummarukudy and Peter 2019 ). The floods and landslides during 2019 also impacted 13 out of the 14 districts in the state.

The need assessment conducted after the 2018 disasters by the United Nations with GOK identified interstate migrant workers as one of the groups that were severely impacted. The assessment estimated that about 2.3 million interstate migrant workers lost their livelihoods (GOK et al. 2018 ). A study exploring how the migrant workers were impacted by the 2018 disasters found out that the migrants were discriminated in rescue, relief and rehabilitation. They had missed the alerts in local languages resulting in poor preparedness and were by and large put in exclusive relief camps for migrants, many of which were prematurely closed leaving them without food and shelter. They also were missed out in the drug administration to prevent spike of cases of leptospirosis after the flood. The damage and loss assessment also was not inclusive, resulting in the eligible workers missing the compensations (Peter and Narendran 2019 ).

The lessons learned from these disasters resulted in a more resilient, inclusive and decentralised response driven by the LSGs as the COVID pandemic hit the state. Kerala now recognises interstate migrant workers as a population vulnerable to disasters (GOK 2019c ). The experience from the two state-wide disasters substantially improved its overall disaster preparedness including mapping migrant pockets, disseminating multilingual messages, entrusting LSGs to response at ward level and DOLS designating officials from grassroots to state levels. The sensitivity of the state-level officials to the issues of migrant workers also has been a key factor that resulted in a proactive response.

While the government has played a very crucial role in alleviating the distress of migrant workers through policy measures at state level, it has enumerated and was directly involved in providing food and other services to only about 4.3 lakhs of workers in the state, whereas the estimate of interstate migrant workers in 2019 tallies to over three million (GOK 2020b ; GOK et al. 2018 ). Also, there is a popular perception outside Kerala that the Government of Kerala set up over 20,000 new relief shelters for migrant workers, largest in India (The Wire 2020 ). In reality, majority of these ‘shelters’ were places where the migrant workers normally resided at the accommodation provided either by their employer/contractor or taken on rent by themselves, recognised as ‘shelters’ for the provision of relief, and were not new relief shelters set up to which workers moved in during the lockdown. Although a large number of workers, particularly footloose labourers, had returned to the native place before lockdown and the government facilitated travel of over three lakhs persons during the lockdown and there were others who travelled in buses to native states, it appears that the majority of the migrant workers in the state continued to remain in the state despite having not received services from the state during the period of lockdown. CMID’s field insights also support such a possibility. This points towards a much larger role played by the employers, contractors and CSOs in providing food and shelter to migrant workers.

A host of other factors may also have played pivotal roles in alleviating the distress of migrant workers in the state. Unlike in many other states, there is only a negligible proportion of migrant workers who live on the pavements/under the flyovers or in open spaces. Most workers live in pucca structures, however dilapidated they are, with access to drinking water and toilets. The proportion of migrant families in the state are also relatively lesser unlike in many urban centres in northern India. It was perhaps easier for the single migrants to stay back with minimal resources and access to fewer meals. Also, the minimum distance to be travelled by a worker in Kerala to any eastern Indian state was over a 1500 km which may have served as a deterrent against the option of walking homewards. In addition to the response of a vibrant civil society in the state, Government of India’s various measures to alleviate the distress of migrant workers have also been beneficial to the workers in Kerala.

None of the forgoing discussion undermines the exceptional role played by GOK in mitigating the distress of migrant workers in the state during national lockdown. Most of the evidence informed steps by the state fostered disaster risk reduction of the migrant workers during the pandemic. The state was also able to undertake necessary midcourse corrections for enhancing the inclusivity of the response through measures such as making migrant workers also eligible for free food from community kitchens although they were excluded initially. A more inclusive response perhaps would have been possible by proactive engagement of the employers and CSOs working with migrants by involving them in the committees and core teams that were set up to address the challenges faced by the workers rather than keeping it by and large driven by officials with limited understanding of the grassroots realities. Entrusting the room owners and marginal contractors to provide food to migrants could have been avoided as it resulted in food shortage faced by the footloose labourers. Appointing a senior officer from social justice as nodal officer instead of a police officer would have been a more sensitive approach than portraying it as a law and order issue. Extracting the train fare from the migrant workers for Shramik trains at the time of distress also did not augur well for a state which highly depends on migration. Delegating food supply exclusively to LSGs would have worked better without duplication/confusion compared to the arrangement of LSGs providing food through community kitchens, while DOLS and revenue department played a major role in the supply of provisions. Besides, keeping the community kitchens live till the livelihoods of the workers were restored could have helped the workers better since winding them up resulted in workers struggling for food at some places.

16 Conclusion

This paper has analysed labour migration to Kerala and has examined key measures by the GOK to promote the social security of the migrant workers and inclusiveness of the response of the state to the distress of migrant workers during the national lockdown by synthesising the available secondary evidence. The welfare measures as well as interventions initiated by the state are exemplary and promising given the intent and provisions under the schemes. However, some measures appear to have been taken without due consideration of the grassroots requirements and implementation mechanisms to enhance access. In the absence of institutionalised and pragmatic arrangements carefully envisaged to implement and monitor the programmes ensuring synergy within and between departments, these measures have rather been tangential than being complementary. As a result, the policy intent and substantial investments have not yielded commensurate results.

Kerala’s experience to promote the welfare of migrant workers in the state offers important lessons for the inclusion of migrant workers in India. Increasingly, internal migration in India is driven by social networks as evident from Kerala. The Interstate Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) (ISMW) Act, 1979, in its current from only applies to the workers recruited by the contractors at their native states and engaged in another state. In order to ensure that all interstate workers benefit from the welfare provisions of the act, in line with the recommendation of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on labour reviewing the Labour Code on Social Security, the current definition of migrant worker in the Act needs to be expanded to include those who move on their own. Besides, the ISMW Act has been one of the legislations that have remained only on paper and substantial reinforcements in human resources may be required to strengthen the department of Labour at state levels to ensure that migrant workers benefit from the provisions of the legislation.

The workers will significantly benefit from comprehensive schemes similar to IMWWS 2010 of GOK that consider not only social security of the worker, but the entire family at the destination. Enrolment in such schemes should be kept simple without the worker needing to pay, produce certificates from employer/officials at the destination or native place or going through annual renewals that require complex paper work. The monthly income ceilings for eligibility if any in both ISMW Act and state-level schemes should be decided in a realistic manner to ensure inclusion of maximum workers than keeping the welfare measures tokenistic. At the same time, care should be taken to avoid schemes such as Aawaz that duplicate components of an existing scheme as it may result in weakening of the systems as well as uptake of both the schemes. Also, harvesting biometric data of the workers beyond minimum requirements amounts to surveillance and should be avoided.

While GOI aims to achieve 100 per cent interstate portability of Public Distribution System (PDS) by March 2021, in the process, GOI should prioritise high migration corridors unlike the way it was done in the case of Kerala where states which supply over 80 per cent of the workforce currently do not figure out among the 11 states with which portability has been already established. Also, for the migrants to benefit from the interstate portability of PDS, GOI may consider individual PDS cards instead of family cards since in long-distance migration for work, most of the family members stay behind in the villages.

Instead of models like Apna Ghar of Kerala where state socially segregates migrant workers and subsidises the employer’s expenses on housing, priority should be given to addressing the housing needs of the most vulnerable workers such as footloose labourers or migrant families. The shelters should be close to their work places/labour nakas, but workers should not be trapped in an industrial area without much access to public provisions. The state may not be able to provide housing to all, but can play the role of a regulator. These could be done at LSG level than entrusting it to the Department of Labour which generally is under-resourced to implement its own programmes. The CSOs can play the role of service facilitators rather than government directly implementing it or outsourcing it to private entities. Instead of exclusive housing for migrants which results in segregated spaces, mainstreaming models work better where workers/families live among others through rental housing that are not exploitative.

Kerala’s experience also reveals that fragmented initiatives for migrant welfare by various departments result in suboptimal outcomes although services may be complementary. Institutional mechanisms should be evolved at state, district and LSG levels to ensure synergy. It is ideal to have a nodal agency with dedicated resources at the state level to plan, facilitate and monitor welfare of migrant workers and their families. Such nodal agencies should also unlock and leverage the unique potentials of Employer and Business Membership Organisations, CSOs and migrant workers. The Trade Unions in India have a substantial role to play so that the migrant workers benefit from the immense social capital created by the unions across Indian states.

The state’s response to the distress of migrant workers during the national lockdown emanates from its historic social capital and more importantly from the overall disaster preparedness and resilience it has achieved from confronting with two consecutive state-wide natural disasters that had devastated Kerala during 2018 and 2019. These disasters had marked migrant workers as a vulnerable group that was left behind and a priority group for future disaster risk reduction initiatives. The lessons learned from the disasters resulted in a more resilient, inclusive and decentralised response driven by the LSGs compared to the unprepared and ad hoc response in 2018 led by the Department of Revenue with a weak presence at the grassroots (Rajesh and Peter 2019). While the GOK has played a strategic role in alleviating the distress of migrant workers through policy imperative and ensuring a synergistic response, the data presented by the state indicate a much larger but invisible role played by the employers, contractors and CSOs in providing food and shelter to migrant workers. A host of other geopolitical factors also appear to have favoured the state in reducing the intensity as well as visibility of the distress experienced by the migrant workers during the lockdown. Kerala’s response also underlines the importance of decentralised governance and management and the challenges faced by the migrant workers by activating LSGs, particularly the ULBs. This calls for nationwide interventions to sensitise the ULBs and ensure inclusive local governance without the sedentary bias.

With the birth and death rates coming to a saturation in many advanced economies, it is migration that will decide the future of the population composition in such areas. This has also brought migration to centre of global politics. Kerala perhaps will be the first Indian state to pass through this phase of the global demographic trajectory. The state, instead of officially promoting ‘Othering’ through portraying the workers who are legitimate Indian citizens as ‘guests’, should construe migration from the rest of India as a win–win solution for the state and an opportunity to diffuse its much appreciated advanced human development to some of the most deprived regions of the country realising that these workers and their families are an integral part of Kerala’s social fabric.

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Peter, B., Sanghvi, S. & Narendran, V. Inclusion of Interstate Migrant Workers in Kerala and Lessons for India. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 63 , 1065–1086 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-020-00292-9

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Accepted : 21 September 2020

Published : 12 November 2020

Issue Date : December 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-020-00292-9

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