PANDEMIC, PRECARITY AND REVERSE MIGRATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF INFORMAL WORKERS RETURNING TO RURAL EASTERN UTTAR PRADESH

Abstract [English]

The COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown in India triggered an unprecedented reverse migration of informal workers from urban centers to rural regions, exposing long-standing structural vulnerabilities within the country’s labor regime. This paper examines the lived experiences of semi-skilled and unskilled informal workers who returned to rural Eastern Uttar Pradesh during the later phase of the pandemic. Using a qualitative research design, primary data were collected through in-depth interviews with twenty-five returning migrant workers at transit locations in Gorakhpur, a major entry point for migrants in the Purvanchal region.
The findings reveal acute livelihood insecurity marked by wage denial, employment termination, food scarcity, and hazardous mobility under a lack of ample safeguards and conditions of institutional absence. The study highlights a stark safety–hunger dichotomy in which survival imperatives outweighed health risks, compelling workers to undertake dangerous journeys home. At the same time, rural households and village-based social networks emerged as critical, though fragile, absorptive safety nets in the absence of effective state support.
This qualitative study argues that the pandemic did not merely constitute a temporary disruption but amplified the long-standing structural precarity of India’s informal workforce, particularly in migrant-sending regions (International Labor Organization [ILO], 2020a; Pentini and Lorenz, 2020). It not just presents the lived reality but also provides some grassroot policy suggestions emphasizing the need for region-specific rural employment strategies, strengthened social protection mechanisms, and institutional preparedness to address future mobility shocks.