Dr. John Mohan Razu
Since the time immemorial human beings have been migrating from one place to another for diverse reason. In recent times, migrants those who migrate has assumed lots of importance politically and economically. Rather it may be said that the term ‘migrants’ has become the central vocabulary or narrative in all the political discourses and policy-making. Politics around the world is centered around ‘migration’. Migration as a concept or a term is being analysed economically, sociologically, politically, and ethically and many tend to inter-face these areas for better understanding and analysis.
Sociologists use a theory called as ‘push and pull’ factors in migration for their analysis and explanations. According to Everett S. Lee (1917-2007) demographers use this dynamic to analyse human migration from former areas to new host locations. Lee’s model divides factors causing migrations into two groups or factors: push and pull dynamics. Push factors are those that are unfavourable about the home area that one lives-in and pull factors are those that attract one hosts to another area within his/her state or totally outside.
What are the factors that pushes an individual or his/her family to leave and move to another areas? The reason that covers the push factors are poverty, political persecution, unable to meet both the ends, natural disasters, constant threat and communal hatred, pollution, discrimination (social, economic, cultural, and political), war/conflict, and few others. The pull factors have been job opportunities, higher wages and other benefits, better living conditions, relative political and religious freedom, children’s future such as education, better health care, scope for quality life.
Apart from those there is another factor the push and pull factors do not happen within the rural but beyond rural. And so, the push and pull factors functions not intra (within rural), but from rural to urban. What is happening is rural is shrinking and urban is expanding. More and more people tend to migrate to townships or urban areas for that the reasons that have been said. Even if we look carefully the Global South the population in urban areas are starkly growing and the rural population is gradually receding.
Increasingly we have been witnessing that the cities are going through a process of urbanisation in terms of development of infrastructural facilities, trade and commerce, and other economic benefits the urban centres or mega cities. Connectivity of roads and highways, modernising the railways, air and sea ports, and increasing the housing units for the migrants who land up into the cities for education, employment, and other businesses. Without production, consumption, and distribution societies shall never sustain. And so, a sizable allocation of the budgetary provisions to meet the needs of the day. For the construction and other works a huge labour force is needed that comprises of both skill and unskilled.
Urban India is pulling and rural is pushing. In this dynamic, those skilled and semi-skilled labour force migrate in huge numbers. Those who migrate need accommodation and other facilities. Kerala a representative case of migration and migrants explain the exodus of one-way migrations and the gravity of their plight:
The pull factor from the rural to the urban India where plenty of labour is needed for development and modernising works propels those who are in need of jobs. Job opportunities are available in plenty in the informal sector in the cities and town. Therefore, the mass exodus of the labouring classes who land-up in townships and mega-cities not knowing the language, culture, locales and many others face all sorts of problems. It is a nightmare for them to settling down in a new milieu not knowing the language and cultural ethos.
In the month of December, 2025, a 31-year-old man, newly arrived from Chhattisgarh looking out for work was lynched. This incident had occurred in Attapallam village of Pallakkad district on December 17th, 2025. The migrant’s name was Ram Narayan Baghel was seen crying out in Hindi, pleading innocence, as he was accused of being a thief and attacked by a group of locals. Not knowing the language and the location, he desperately, wandered around for hours carrying a paper having Sashikant Baghel’s address in Hindi, a contractor arrived five days earlier. To get help from someone, he knocked at the doors of a few houses around 2pm, The local residents thought that he was a thief from Bangladesh and killed him.
Apart from lynching based on the assumption from neighbouring country or looking differently from them, we come across brutal xenophobic tendencies happening to migrants spreading across the country in recent times. Not knowing the language, cultural differences, and economic insecurity forces the people to migrate from one place to another. The State of Kerala or those from Kerala should know and have thus been experienced as they themselves a migrant community. State of Kerala thrives as a vibrant diaspora that claims itself as a progressive society in terms of 100%literacy, progressive thinking, and prides of NRI deposits, but shows intolerance towards migrants by employing ‘Othering’ formulae.
Migrants across the country face social exclusion driven by the language barrier and poor living and working conditions, hardly have any healthcare facilities. Since they come in search of employment, they tend to become easy prey to cheap labour exploitation in terms of wages as well as hours of work. Local labour force cannot be exploited both wages and hours of work, but a migrant labour could easily be exploited as they thus become bargainable community. A sizable number of migrants happened to be bachelors and thus become vulnerable to labour exploitation—wages and hours of work as the contractors take advantage of their dependence.
