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Migration: When War is No Deterrent to a Desperate Job Seeker

Unemployment at home pushes thousands of Indians to look overseas for work—even in war zones. What’s missing is a coherent policy to protect them amid this migration.

By Chandan Nandy, 360info
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Job Seeker

Widespread unemployment in India is at the root of labour migration to some of the world's conflict zones. | Michael Joiner, 360info | Credits CCBY4.0

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Migration is most easily explained in the following terms: people move from one country to another if the expected benefits exceed the costs. That is, if there are jobs and better wages.

But how do we explain the movement of labour from certain Indian states to countries at war, such as Russia and Israel?

While illegal outmigration from India is nothing new — one study found that about 725,000 Indians now live illegally in the US — the movement of people to conflict zones reflects potential migrants’ desire to escape desperate conditions at home for a relatively better life elsewhere, even when confronted with human emergencies caused by war

Indians migrating to Russia and then finding themselves thrown into the conflict as combatants, and hundreds of people in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana states signing up for jobs in Israel, underscore an important point: migrating to conflict zones is

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