Climate-Induced Internal Migration for Domestic Work in India: Gendered Pathways, Regional Dynamics, and Policy Responses – SPRF

In India, internal migration for domestic work has emerged as a major form of feminised labour mobility, closely linked to the burgeoning impacts of climate change in affected areas, social marginalisation, and rural agrarian crises. The evidence from cyclone-affected coasts of West Bengal, floodplains of Assam, tribal tracts of Jharkhand, drought-affected Bundelkhand, and climate-affected Himalayan districts indicates that environmental changes are contributing to a tightening of push factors that are compelling women and teenage girls into informal work as domestic workers in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru. However, this is addressed piecemeal under India’s existing policies on labour, migration, and climate change. This paper argues that climate change now functions as a threat multiplier within the already existing unequal structures of caste, tribe, class, and gender, amplifying distress migration into domestic work and deepening precarity at both origin and des

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