Temporary Migration, Network and Livelihood: A Study from Rural Odisha

Abstract

India is in the middle of transformation from a rural agrarian to an urban-industrial and service led mode of production. Under the current capitalist production, many people are driven out of agriculture and settle their habitat in the urban center. In a developing country like India, unskilled migrant workers are engaged in the urban informal sector. The economic distress in rural area is one of the main reasons of migration to the urban's informal side. At the same time, the unfree agrarian relation prolongs the misery through an interlinked market structure. The socio-economic distresses in the rural area forced them to migrate to the urban informal sector, and again they stock in the urban's informal sector in another unfree system, which Breman called "neo bondage” (Breman J. , 1996), (2013). The studies on informal urban economy explain the cursive and exploitative nature of employment. He exposes the urban informal sector employment as neo bondage. In the late twentieth century, the socio-economic transition in south Asia confines a large-scale migration from rural to the urban center in search of their livelihood. However, a complete lack of institutional support, uncertain work tenure, dismal condition at the workplace and long working hours along with low wages have perpetually forced them to return to their place of origin, turning labour migration into labour circulation process (Breman J. , 2004) (2009) (2015).