ABSTRACT
What do the pandemic and the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 reveal about migrant lives in cities before the pandemic? Based on multiple methodologies, researchers of the Project ‘From the Margins: Exploring Low-Income Migrant Workers Access to Basic Services’ explored work, housing, welfare, education, safety and violence to analyse contexts in which low-income migrants work and live in two second-tier cities with large migrant populations – Jalandhar, Punjab, and Guwahati, Assam. Migrants access to health presents a mixed picture. However, migrants who fall seriously ill or are injured during the course of work are not taken care of by employers. Access to state facilities is limited by the absence of necessary documents, especially for short-term migrants.
