Articles

Special Issue: Development in Practice 

Editors: Harshita Sinha, Patrick Kilby and Ekata Bakshi

This edition explores the complex intersections of migration, informality, and inequality, focusing on both the lived experiences of individuals and the broader socio-economic and political frameworks shaping them. The special edition brings together empirical, theoretical, or policy-focused approaches to these themes.

The contributions draw on Interdisciplinary discussions from (but not limited to): Development Studies, Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Anthropology, and Geography. Our aim is to feature fresh perspectives that enhance understanding and foster critical conversations around the intersection of migration, informality, and inequality, particularly in the context of the Global South.

Under Review: Global Social Policy

Paper co-authored with Max Gallien and Vanessa van den Boogard

This article examines the relationship between informality and social protection in India, focusing on the state’s attempt to extend coverage to informal workers after Covid-19 through e-Shram, a digital registration platform. The pandemic exposed long-standing disconnections between the state and informal workers: even where relief measures included them, barriers to access left many excluded from emergency support.

In response, the Indian state launched e-Shram, which was subsequently advocated as a step towards formalisation. We note, while the platform has expanded state visibility of informal workers, partly under pressure from a Supreme Court order—it reflects a narrow vision of formalisation, one that prioritises administrative needs over workers’ welfare. As a result, improvements in labour rights and social protection remain limited. We argue that formalisation should be understood as a multidimensional process, not reducible to digital registration. For India, and other countries experimenting with digital formalisation, the challenge lies in aligning state objectives with meaningful social and economic protections for informal workers.

Co-authored with Priyansha Singh, Varun Aggarwal and Mukta Naik

While global migration governance has gained growing attention in policy and academia, internal migration remains comparatively under-researched. The COVID-19 pandemic briefly shifted this focus, exposing the vulnerability of low-income internal migrants and generating new policy debates. In this article, we examine how Indian state governments, which were the major recipients of internal migrants, responded to the crisis. Drawing on a literature review and two rounds of the Interstate Migrant Policy Index (IMPEX 2019 and 2021), we trace the changes in migration-related policies before and after the pandemic. The findings show that while COVID-19 underscored the precarity of internal migrants, it only partially translated into sustained policy measures, leaving long-term gaps in protection.

We argue that understanding the governance of internal migration, particularly in federal democracies like India, is essential to global migration governance. Such a focus can help developing economies refine labour and social protection frameworks, improve mobility for economic development, and prepare welfare systems for challenges such as climate-induced migration.