Migrants

With there being almost no housing policies for lower income migrant workers in the country, Kerala has attempted to address this problem by introducing a state-level housing policy called Apna Ghar. This article examines the policy’s effectiveness by exploring the “housing–work” relation in the existing housing sub-markets in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, in which the residential typologies inhabited by such worker groups are examined as to their economic affordability, service/amenities adequacy, workplace accessibility and ease of renting/shifting habitations.

In the most perilous situations, those that are least protected by the state are the first to be compelled to make a choice between disease and starvation.

Migrant workers in one of Mumbai’s most industrially dense areas with 3,500 small manufacturing and recycling units face a number of hazards, with fires being among the common ones. This article looks closely at the causes and aftermaths of these fires and notes how the workers cope with them even as their skills and knowledge prevent even bigger accidents.

Since the 19th century, South Africa's economy has been sustained by the migration of cheap labour from neighbouring countries. But the end of apartheid, the consequent search for a new national identity and the accompanying tensions of a nation in transition have also fuelled deep suspicion and hostility against such migrants, who are now viewed increasingly as 'aliens'.