ABSTRACT
Partition ghosts are back in India. Hundreds of thousands of jobless migrant laborers walked back home with their pots, pans, blankets, and tattered rucksacks. Many were without food or any form of shelter. Some walking migrants carried hungry children on their shoulders, and a few doughty daughters peddled their sick fathers home. The homelessness of the metropolitan bourgeoisie is celebrated as the second home or home stay elsewhere. In contrast, the homelessness of migrants or itinerant laborers is rarely acknowledged. Described as “footloose workers” in migration studies, around 100 to 120 million seasonal migrant laborers in India circulate from place to place, never with the intention to settle, but to return to their native villages and towns once they complete their jobs or when the working season ends. There is no robust social science evidence that migrants’ continuing links to their former places of residence prevent them from forging long term civic and political ties in their place of residence.
