Breaking down the question
This is a directed question asking you to establish whether a connection exists between labour migration and the informal sector, and to justify your position with Indian evidence. The expected answer is affirmative — there is a strong, mutually reinforcing link — but the marks lie in the justification. You must show the mechanisms that tie migrant labour to informal work and support them with the Indian context.
The informal sector comprises economic activity outside the ambit of state regulation, social security and stable contracts. Labour migration, especially the circular movement of rural workers to urban and industrial sites, feeds directly into this sector. Your task is to make that relationship explicit and evidenced.
How to approach it
State your position at the outset: migration and informality are deeply interconnected in India. Then justify through distinct mechanisms — the absorption of migrants into unregulated work, circular migration, the role of contractors and networks, and the vulnerability this produces. Jan Breman's studies of footloose labour and Arjan de Haan's work on circular migration provide authoritative support. Keep the answer analytical and grounded. Our note on the informal sector and child labour supports this discussion.
Model answer
There is a clear and mutually reinforcing connection between labour migration and the informal sector in India, and the two are best understood as parts of a single circuit of cheap, flexible labour.
The informal sector, which absorbs the overwhelming majority of India's workforce, functions on unregulated, contract-free and socially unprotected employment. Migrant workers are its principal supply. Rural labourers displaced by agrarian distress and landlessness move to cities and industrial zones where they enter construction, brick kilns, street vending, domestic work and small manufacturing — activities that lie almost entirely outside formal regulation. Jan Breman's concept of footloose labour captures this pool of mobile workers perpetually available for informal engagement.
A defining feature of the Indian case is circular migration, analysed by Arjan de Haan, in which workers oscillate between village and workplace rather than settling permanently. This circulation suits employers precisely because it externalises the costs of housing, welfare and reproduction onto the village, allowing them to hire migrants informally, seasonally and without long-term obligation. The seasonal movement to sugarcane fields, brick kilns and construction sites illustrates this pattern.
The connection is mediated by contractors and social networks. Labour contractors recruit workers through kin and caste ties, advance wages that bind them in debt, and deploy them on informal terms. This system deepens informality by keeping employment relations personal and opaque rather than contractual.
The result is a structural vulnerability. Migrant informal workers lack job security, minimum-wage enforcement, social protection and often legal identity at the destination. The distress reverse migration during the 2020 lockdown exposed the scale and precarity of this migrant-informal workforce with unusual clarity.
In sum, labour migration and the informal sector are not merely correlated but constitutively linked in India: migration supplies the informal economy with its flexible labour, and the informal economy structures the terms on which migrants work and live. Any account of one is incomplete without the other.
Examiner's perspective
The examiner expects a clear stance backed by mechanisms and Indian evidence. A high-scoring answer states the connection at the start and then justifies it through absorption into unregulated work, circular migration, contractor networks and resulting precarity.
Citing Breman on footloose labour and de Haan on circular migration demonstrates command of the specialist literature, while an example such as the 2020 reverse migration grounds the argument in recent reality. Avoid an abstract definition of informality with no link to migration. Analytical structure, British spelling and concrete Indian illustration secure the higher band.