Migrant women staying behind

By Dilip -

Millions of internal migrants were sent back to their homes across India since the first coronavirus lockdowns. By the time restrictions lifted, many women had already lost work, and faced compounding layers of inequality. Sunita Devi’s life is a study in contrasts. On a cold February morning, the 35-year-old daily wage worker turned the wheels of a chaff cutter in her village in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. If ‘things had not changed’, Devi would have been 400 kilometers away quarrying stones instead in the neighbouring state of Rajasthan.

For more than 15 years now, Devi and her family have been inter-stiate migrants who travel to more than half a dozen cities from Mandi Mirza Khan village in search of work. Her migration, like most of India’s informal workforce, is seasonal and often circular (to earn and remit money back), lasting anywhere between six to ten months in a year. She has led a hardscrabble life of manual labour to earn just 9,000 rupees or INR (roughly 110€) a month....

https://www.eurozine.com/migrant-women-staying-behind/

Written by Anuja and edited by Tina Lee, this article was contributed to Eurozine by Unbias the News – they published it originally on 10 March 2022. This report was produced as part of DW Akademie’s Media Fellowship on Displacement and Migration.






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