Migrant Workers in Conflict hit Jammu and Kashmir: Livelihood Vs Security

Abstract

The Kashmir Valley is an abode to number of workers from different states and union territories of India. The present study attempt to investigate the causation of inflow of migrant workers to most highly militarized and conflict hit zone in the world. The study is based purely on secondary data. The migration data has been related to civilian fatalities because the fatalities of civilians create more fear of insecurity among the masses than the military causalities normally in conflicting zone. Simple statistical tools of growth and CGAR has been used to show the trend of both the migrants and civilian fatalities over  more than three decades along with major massacres occurred during the period under study. The study found that despite several massacres and individual civilian killings in the conflict hit Jammu and Kashmir the migrant workers didn’t stopped coming to this conflicting zone except after the abrogation of article 370 when a new trend of targeted killing started on out of state migrant workers which hitherto was not visible. It is only after abrogation of said article the migrant workers started out flowing from the UT especially Kashmir valley temporarily when spate of attacks were carried out by Terrorist groups with fear of demographic change. The main reason behind the  in-migration of workers in spite of having conflicting zone are  lack of economic opportunities at their place of origin and better wages and community support at the destination place. It is also revealed by study that livelihood is paramount to security for the migrant workers. The workers are ready to take risky employment to feed their dependents than caring about their lives

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