Climate Change, Migration and Women: Analysing Construction Workers in Odisha

Abstract

The research article seeks to focus on the status of women from the coastal districts of Odisha who have become migrants essentially because of repeated floods and extreme climatic events. Fluctuating weather conditions, the consequent depletion of agricultural work and availability of other forms of employment in their place of origin are some reasons behind the migration of these women. The study particularly looks at Bhubaneswar where women, largely illiterate and landless, mostly belonging to Scheduled Caste groups, have been able to find work on construction sites. Despite evident hardship, they have been able to meet the challenges of living in new urban destinations and in the process better their living conditions. This can be seen in the improvement of their financial status, a new-found focus of educating their daughters, the development of levels of self-confidence and the overcoming of some deeply entrenched social barriers. However, in other areas, the marginalisation of such groups continues, and vulnerabilities prevail in many forms, evident, for instance, in the lack of land ownership by women, the absence of opportunities to upgrade skills to access better work opportunities and issues of safety and security of young girls.

Migration and Household Adaptation in Climate-Sensitive Hotspots in South Asia

“…Recent studies have nuanced this model to demonstrate that migration decisions are a complex interplay of household capabilities (i.e. composition, education levels, social networks), assets, personal aspirations, and external factors such as increased climate variability, livelihood opportunities, and access to towns and cities [22,26,72,85,94].…”

Moving in and out of vulnerability: Interrogating migration as an adaptation strategy along a rural–urban continuum in India

“…However, the option to migrate is often available only to those who can incur the significant economic and psycho‐social costs that moving demands (De Haan, ; Kothari, ). Migration can also have negative impacts: migrants often enter unsafe, precarious livelihoods in urban areas, tend to live in risk‐prone locations, and are often disempowered because of shifts in the influence of their social networks in cities, and loss of existing networks of kinship and care (Bettini & Gioli, ; Bhagat, ; Michael et al, ; Patil & Giri, ; Wrathall & Suckall, ). Further, moving can leave additional work burdens on those left behind, predominantly women and older people (Chindarkar, ; Desai & Banerji, ), and leave residual communities in rural areas with compromised capacity (Robson & Nayak, ; Warner & Afifi, ; Singh ).…”

“…They find that drought frequency drives inter‐state migration (Dallman & Millock, ), and temperature and rainfall fluctuations significantly motivate temporary migration (Viswanathan & Kumar, ). However, climate change affects migration decisions after being filtered through the local socio‐economic context (Dallman & Millock, ; Patel & Giri, ) and acts as an “additional driver for already existing migration behaviour, amplifying and diminishing some (but not all) push and pull factors” (Upadhyay et al, , p. 402).…”

Proliferation of Tribal Migrants and Repercussion: Case Study from the Tribal Areas of Sundargarh District, Odisha (India)

“…Patel and Giri (2019) 25 analyse the status of migrant women working in different construction sites in the coastal districts of Odisha. They conducted this study particularly in Bhubaneswar where women migrants, mostly illiterate and landless, belonging to Scheduled Caste forced to migrate basically due to repeated natural calamities like flood.…”