A transnational social contract How a plurality of actors shape the rights of Indian low-wage labor emigrants along the India-Gulf Cooperation Council migration corridor

Many low-wage employed migrant workers worldwide face precarious jobs, unsafe conditions, and poor living situations. The India-Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) corridor exemplifies this: India sends the most migrants globally, and approximately half of all Indian migrants stay in the GCC region, where most work in so-called unskilled job categories. Migrant-origin states such as India potentially deploy a variety of policy tools to protect and enforce their citizens’ labor and human rights abroad. However, despite the norm of supporting and providing rights to their nationals abroad, this is not an obligation states have. This dissertation shows that the rights Indian emigrants receive are informed by notions of deservingness and membership negotiated and shaped by a plurality of local, subnational, national, trans- and international state and non-state actors.
Drawing on document analysis, observations, and interviews with actors involved in the transnational policy process of emigration and emigrant policymaking in the GCC region and India, the dissertation finds that the Indian state differentiates its policies along labels of high and low-skilled migration and that differentiated access to social protection and other citizenry rights also results from varying subnational incorporation of emigrants and practices of CSOs in the origin and destination context which support emigrants in procuring rights.