Introduction

Humans have always moved. Yet in our chronically mobile society, migration continues to be perceived as a pathology which has incited frequent violence globally, as seen in the resurgence of right-wing nationalism in the 2000s, and invited political backlash. India is no exception to this. Be it the “Bangladeshi” migrant in Assam, the “Rohingya” in Jammu, or the “Bihari” in Delhi, the figure of the migrant has become highly villainized in the current urban discourse.

Although it is international refugee migration that dominates the news cycle routinely, the numbers of people migrating internally, that is within national borders, far outstrip international migration. In India, the 2011 Census classified 454 million Indians (37 percent of the total population) as internal migrants. Much like international migrants, internal migrants, in particular those who come from rural areas and for whom migration is often a livelihood strategy, encounter a lesser citizenship than their nonmigrant counterparts. Held responsible in large part for India's rapidly burgeoning urbanization crisis, migrants are often accepted economically while being rejected socially. That is, while they are essential for the provision of cheap labor and day-to-day services, they are also blamed for the poor livability of Indian cities.

Sadly, despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) advocating the inclusion of migrants in the overall development of cities, the policy response to internal migration in India has largely mirrored the public sentiment against migration. Short of implementing direct controls on population movement, welfare policies link the provision of subsidized food, education, and healthcare to those who are “Below the Poverty Line (BPL)” to the permanent place of residence and ensure that these benefits cannot be claimed elsewhere. The latest in this line of policies, the Smart Cities initiative, which promises to “solve” the many problems of Indian cities in an inclusive way, has already been criticized as having left behind the most vulnerable and poor urban Indian citizens, owing to its onus on “exclusionary urbanization.” The effect of such an urbanization process is the reinforcement of the very identity-based inequalities that migrants, especially from rural settings, are often hoping to escape.