As agricultural employment has declined in India, a shortage of jobs in rural areas has pushed millions to migrate. While the rise of low-skill manufacturing jobs has economically benefited rural-urban migrants and holds promise for improving the livelihoods of millions of poor households in developing countries, these jobs often entail harsh work environments (Heath and Mobarak 2015; Blattman and Dercon 2018). Rural-urban migrants in India often belong to vulnerable groups, e.g. people from indebted/financially households, scheduled castes, and young unmarried women. On finding their first jobs (through referrals or recruiters), they have little information about wages/working conditions across factories (Boudreau et al., forthcoming). Information frictions can entrench incorrect beliefs about outside options and search costs, dampening job mobility and wage negotiations. Misperceptions about the relative quality of their factory can keep workers stuck in jobs with poor wages and conditions. As job mobility drives earnings growth, and can moderate employers’ monopsony power by strengthening workers’ bargaining position, efforts to mitigate information/search frictions that impair mobility can raise worker welfare and reduce labor market efficiencies. In Bangladesh, migrant garment workers are more likely than locals to start their careers in factories with worse conditions, later switching to better ones (Boudreau et al., forthcoming). Thus, helping vulnerable migrants in India quickly find better jobs is key so they earn a living without compromising their health or safety.
I am focusing on the experiences of migrant workers employed in the garment industry in India. The garment sector is India’s second largest employer overall, and is one of the main sectors which employs women. My study is based in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, a major garment export hub where 70% of the workers are migrants and 60% are women.
Inexperienced migrants may not know who can help them navigate their new industry, and may hesitate to seek advice to avoid appearing weak/uninformed (Banerjee et al. 2018, Chandrasekhar et al. 2018). Those in workers’ existing networks (“strong ties”) may be less likely to provide new labor market information/referrals, relative to “weak ties” with whom they interact with less (Granovetter 1983, Rajkumar et al. 2022, Jahani et al. 2023). Cash constraints, low levels of agency or self-efficacy, and coordination failures may also dampen job search and negotiation.
My plan for the summer is to conduct a survey with migrant workers currently employed in the Tirupur garment industry to learn more about the wages and working conditions at their current and prior factories, their employment and migration histories, and the challenges they face in searching for a new job or negotiating with employers for a raise, promotion or improvements in the working environment. Results from the survey will help me design a study testing the effectiveness of interventions to mitigate the information and search frictions preventing migrant workers from switching to better jobs and moving up the job ladder. I’m excited to get started!
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