Before launching the surveys, I wanted to visit Tirupur for a scoping visit, to identify potential locations for the survey and to conduct some qualitative interviews with migrant workers employed in the garment sector. To learn more about the context, I reached out to a local NGO, Social Awareness and Voluntary Education (SAVE) which has actively been working to improve the welfare of garment workers and their children in Tirupur since 1993.
SAVE conducts information campaigns with workers employed in Tirupur’s garment factories to inform them of their labor rights and the grievance redressal mechanisms available to them if employers are not treating them well. Migrant workers coming to Tamil Nadu typically do not speak the local language, Tamil. As a result they find it difficult to engage with local labor unions which are typically run by Tamil workers. To overcome this challenge, SAVE employs field staff who can speak the languages commonly-spoken by migrant workers, including Hindi, Odiya and Bengali.
Another key component of SAVE’s mission is to provide support to the children of migrant workers. When families migrate together, children often end up dropping out of school because language barriers make it difficult for their parents to locate a suitable school nearby. Moreover, most of the local schools use Tamil as the medium of instruction, making it very difficult for the children of migrant workers to follow the material being taught in class. SAVE conducts door-to-door campaigns asking migrant households if they would like to enroll their children in school. They have identified a set of suitable English-medium schools, and provide assistance to parents with enrolling their children.
I reached out to the Executive Director of SAVE, who kindly agreed to set up a meeting to tell me more about their work, and share her insights on the challenges faced by migrant workers. During our conversation, she highlighted several issues: delayed wage payments, unpaid overtime work, harassment by supervisors, and low awareness of labor rights. All these challenges are compounded by the fact that migrant workers face language barriers. Workers are increasingly migrating from states such as Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where people commonly speak Odiya, Bengali and Hindi. This makes it difficult for migrants to engage with the local Tamil-speaking people who are typically not fluent in their native language. Due to these language barriers, it is hard for migrants to negotiate with their employers, search for new jobs, use public transport, access public health facilities, and utilize the social security benefits they are entitled to (e.g. health insurance, maternity leave, paid leave etc.).
When I mentioned that I was planning to visit Tirupur, she kindly offered that some of her field staff could help me with identifying locations for my survey and interviewing migrant workers. Speaking to the workers directly will be incredibly helpful to get a sense of the key issues they face, so I can re-design my survey to focus on the most relevant challenges.
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