The
Problem
There are 300 million internal migrant workers in Asia according to official estimates. The real number is likely much more. A large proportion of internal migrants are forced to migrate for subsistence employment due to socio-economic distress. Despite being significant contributors to their country’s GDP, they often contend with systemic disenfranchisement due to the power imbalance (e.g., informal employment, lack of employer accountability) and high vulnerability (e.g., due to low savings and lack of access to social protection systems). While international migration receives some attention, internal migration has largely been invisible.
Even as they embark on aspirational social mobility journeys, they normatively receive below minimum wage, are vulnerable to forced labour, and are unprotected from economic and health shocks.
Our
Solution
To address the underlying systemic issues, People’s Courage International established the ‘Migrants Resilience Collaborative’ (MRC). Starting with India, MRC aims to sustainably impact 10s of millions of migrants over five years across 100 high migration districts and enable systemic improvements that build socio-economic resilience of the estimated 200 million migrants across India. Our strategy combines two key components critical to bridging the massive delivery gap in access to social protections for migrants:
Implementation for last-mile access
MRC directly facilitates government social protection – both social security benefits and worker protection – for the most vulnerable migrants. Today, we reach over 5.8 million migrant households today across 13 states in India, with a specific focus on excluded groups (including women and historically disadvantaged castes). Over the next five years, we will scale these on-the-ground efforts to ensure meaningful social protection for 10 million households. Through this, we will also build the capacity of others to implement this model and meet the demand for last-mile support in the long-term.
Systems change for migrant inclusivity
MRC works to strengthen government infrastructure and activate industry levers to provide a clear pathway for social protections for tens of millions of migrant households. We are partnering with governments – particularly at the state-level – to enable migrant-inclusive design and delivery infrastructure, as they are ultimately responsible for social protection. Strengthening government infrastructure will enable faster, better, cheaper access to social protection, easing direct delivery work for MRC and others. To ensure expanded delivery, we will also work with industry to increase incentives and accountability to enable and fund access to social protection for the millions of migrants working in their supply chains.
Even as we scale our impact in India, MRC will work with community-based organizations in South and South-east Asia to explore and help build contextualized solutions that help solve similar challenges relating to broken delivery systems.
