The scope of this analysis is to take a close look at the labour relations in which migrant construction workers are involved and to try to contribute to a better understanding of determinants, characteristics and consequences of labour migration, in the background of neo-liberal policies implemented by the Indian government, its dubious political will to enforce its own labour laws and the complete vulnerability of the workers, especially migrant.
There are two main aims of this paper: firstly, explore and analyze the labour conditions and labour relations of migrant workers, in particular in public sector worksites; and secondly, investigate the determinants and dynamics of their migration. For this purpose, a case study will be illustrated. Moreover, the present attitude of the Indian state towards migrant workers will be briefly considered.

Detailed information is presented in the paper about the socio-economic background of the migrant construction workers, the migration patterns which have characterised their working lives, the labour conditions experienced and the labour relations they are involved in.

The causes of migration are investigated, with the aim to collect some field data to discuss theoretical issues regarding the determinants of migration (survival vs. subsistence motivations, push vs. pull factors, individual choice vs. collective (household) decision, etc.).

The information presented have been gathered during repeated visits to the work sites and through participatory observation, focus group and in depth structured interview (questionnaires).

The location of the case study is Delhi, and specifically two work sites in the two main Universities where public institutions have contracted construction work to private companies who employ largely migrant labour. An analysis of the available state-level data will be presented, and compared with the findings of the case studies.

This research contributes to challenging some of the 'neo-classical' assumptions regarding the determinants of migration, such as the role of individual choice in internal migration, and makes an attempt to link the labour conditions and labour relations observed in the work sites to the pressure to cut costs and be competitive and to the incapacity/unwillingness (corruption issue) of the State to implement labour laws. The results of the research show clearly that the use of migrant labour guarantees better control of the workforce and lower wages, which leads to an easier and higher surplus extraction.

• By far the predominant social-productive arrangement in both villages is simple commodity production combined with production for self-consumption, organised at the ‘household’ level. Integration into the global capitalist economy is achieved in the sphere of circulation: wage-labour is very incipient and its expansion is constrained by several factors. In one of the villages, non-capitalist forms of exploitation include the remnants of an older form of tribute labour for the chieftains. In both villages, patriarchal exploitation is rendered extremely apparent by polygamous marriages, the structure of property and the ways in which work is organised.
• In both villages, migration and remittances have played a very important role in fostering development, if the latter is to be understood as an improvement in living conditions and expansion of human choices and capabilities. However, the last couple of years have seen the two villages suffer a severe blow as a consequence of the global economic crisis and its effects upon migrant workers in Europe.
• Again in both villages, migration has seemingly proven unable to overcome the structural barriers in place to a swift transition to agrarian capitalism through village-level class differentiation. This is because neither indigenous accumulation nor dispossession seem to have been furthered by the dynamics engendered by migration. Thus, if development is to be understood in the Marxist sense as the establishment of conditions conducive to the expanded reproduction of the capitalist mode of production, then such a migration-development nexus could not be identified in this case.

Firstly, labour migration is an outcome of the unequal access to basic goods and services and increasingly informal employment in many countries of origin. Moreover, migrants are positively selected and poor countries lose their ‘best and brightest’ to rich countries (brain drain). An increasingly service-oriented global economy during the past thirty years has heightened these trends, with highly skilled labour in only a few careers e.g. business administration, law, computer systems, being more employable than the rest -- other skilled and low skilled workers. Secondly, migrants increasingly using costly informal means and networks to arrive at countries of destination, reinforce inequalities by recreating a quasi-third tier in the labour force of these countries. Labour conditions and wages are often below legally established norms, while their legal status and precariousness of living conditions segregate them, making livelihoods highly insecure.

Then, why does migration occur when economic insecurity is present in both countries of origin and destination?

Immigrants arrive at destinations not necessarily to live the 'American' or 'European' dream (in contrast to wage differential theories), but increasingly with the expectation to send remittances to their families in countries of origin. This is why immigrants endure job and wage insecurity at destinations, with empirical evidence revealing that remittance flows tend to increase in times of deeper covariate 'shocks' at origins, e.g. Honduras, Senegal. However, and thirdly, while remittances serve to improve the livelihoods of receiving households, they also serve to reproduce inequalities along several dimensions: a) at the community level, by diverging the fate of the receivers from the non-receivers; b) at the national level, by feeding liquidity into a system characterized by uneven-access to finance and productive activities; and c) at the fiscal level, by making governments addicted to foreign exchange to finance deficits and liberalization policies, thus deferring development strategies.

The understanding of these dynamics might help to design polices that could better grapple international labour migration by tackling the multiple dimensions of inequalities. The paper would also propose macroeconomic and labour policies that can promote secure and productive employment at origins as well as explore ways on how developing countries could exert pressure for reducing the brain drain and respect for human and labor rights of immigrants.

An alternative approach, relying upon transnational views, gift-remitting literature and Marx’s political economy, will be sketched. I will argue that, although remittances are mainly expressed through money, they do not constitute a flow of capital, they are private monies, portions of wages transferred between workers. As money, the ultimate commodity, they contain power, encapsulating both social reward and punishment. Moreover, they are a reflection on how in capitalist society the economic permeates the non-economic and how the latter can be placed to the service of a market rationale.

Looking for the different types of migration, and drawing upon the alternative broader rationality underpinning the remittances process, this paper discusses the role of migrants’ remittances on the transition to capitalism. The process of remitting is presented as deeply rooted in social relations where the non-economic factors, such as kinship, ethnicity, custom, social norms and moral values, are placed at service of capitalist purposes. Under this framework, the different uses and purposes of remittances, ranging to unproductive accumulation to entrepreneurial investment, emerge as a natural outcome of capitalist dynamics.