The Indian State’s Practice of a Safe and Orderly Migration

Over the past few decades, considerable literature has emerged on the role of the state, particularly the sending state, in managing migration towards various political and development goals. The call for safe and orderly migration arises alongside the discourse on how migration and development are interlinked. The 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the Global Compact for Migration adopted in 2018, outline a paradigm for “safe, orderly and responsible” migration.

This essay explores the realities of this framework on the ground, and how national and subnational governments envision and implement programs to those ends. Specifically, I examine how India, the world’s largest sender of migrant labor, envisions safe and ethical migration through the dissemination of marketable skills for prospective migrant workers. To do so, I draw on interviews with worker organizations, as well as federal and state skill and recruitment agencies, in the major migrant-sending regions of Delhi, Kerala, and Telangana.

The promise and limitations of the “skill–migration ecosystem” for safe and orderly migration

The colonial and post-colonial Indian state has always intervened and engaged with its migrant population to achieve its own development ends, as Rina Agarwala argues. One of the primary ways this intervention has occurred is through ensuring the safety of its migrant workers.

More recently, the Indian state has attempted to promote ethical recruitment by providing migrant workers with marketable skills and by sending them through official channels negotiated in bilateral labor agreements (BLAs) with receiving countries. While limited in their enforceability, these agreements aspire to ensure a mutually agreed upon set of norms regarding safe and ethical recruitment practices, as well as wages and work protections in destination countries. As of February 2025, the Indian federal government, as well as some state governments, entered into skill-based BLAs with countries such as Germany, Israel, and Japan for a wide variety of occupations and sectors, including construction, electrical and technical work, and healthcare. Through these agreements, the Indian government argued that they could also better control the functioning of private agencies, which still dominate the recruitment market, through monitoring and occasional collaboration. New actors (namely federal and state agencies, in addition to private skill development agencies) have now entered the “skill–migration” ecosystem.

However, implementing these programs has been challenging within the fragmented federalist Indian migration management framework. Federal and state actors pursue differing goals and strategies, but also hold distinct political stances, causing competition and confusion during the implementation process. My interviews with federal and state skilling agencies revealed fierce competition among them, as they seek to outdo one another for contracts and institutional prominence, as well as to compete with the numerous existing private recruitment and skilling agencies. This has led to a lack of collaboration and created confusion about the standard for skilling migrants. For instance, while the recent India–Germany agreement required stringent skill and language training standards to be met before recruitment could take place, the longer established India–Israel agreement for construction work only required a cursory task-based test.

The practicalities and ethics of “safe” migration to danger zones

The India–Israel agreement, in fact, sparked great controversy regarding what constituted safe and ethical labor migration. When I questioned officials on the safety of sending Indian workers to an active conflict zone, both the federal and Telangana state agencies justified their decision by assuring strict government oversight. The workers would receive a good wage for their work, with the agreement even covering their food and accommodation. In the event that workers find themselves in a dangerous situation, the Indian consulates would take care of their needs, including their evacuation, if required.

The Kerala state agencies, on the other hand, did question the safety and ethics of the bilateral agreement. In contrast to the federal government’s more ambivalent stance towards the conflict, the Kerala Chief Minister officialy condemned Israel’s attacks in Gaza in December 2023. The Kerala government recruitment agencies confirmed that, following the Chief Minister’s statement, they refused to send workers to Israel under this agreement. As one Kerala state recruitment agent argued:

“We [government agencies] should be focused on the ethical recruitment of workers to various destinations. Sending them to an active war zone is antithetical to any sort of ethicality!”

The extent of the inability of the Indian government to protect workers was also evident in hiring and firing practices. A few months after the arrival of the first batch of workers in Israel, an investigative report found that almost 2,000 Indian workers were laid off from their workplaces by local Israeli contractors, resulting in many being deported from Israel altogether. The employers cited a “lack of skills” as the reason for the dismissals. And there was little that the government could do to redress the situation. This incident revealed several cracks in this program’s vision to facilitate “safe, orderly, and responsible” migration.

Bringing in worker voices

Finally, beyond federal and state governments, civil society matters too. Traditionally, worker organizations, civic groups, and transnational labor networks have been instrumental in defending migrant rights. My interviews reveal that as government management of migrant labor expands, the voice of migrant worker organizers has diminished. For example, Indian trade unions opposed India’s deal with Israel, arguing that it was not ethical at all to add to the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. Yet, unions and other migrant organizations confirmed that they were not consulted during the formulation of those agreements.

Organizers noted that any move towards safe and ethical recruitment of migrant workers needed to take into consideration the insights of those defending the rights of migrant workers on the ground. In the context of tightening global borders, their inclusion becomes increasingly critical, especially at the transnational level. Beyond training migrant workers and matching them with willing employers, any hope for safe and orderly migration will require a more inclusive vision for ensuring migrant worker rights.

Ashwin Kumar, Cornell University, USA <ak2398@cornell.edu>