Abstract
In India, internal migration for domestic work has emerged as a major form of feminised labour mobility, closely linked to the burgeoning impacts of climate change in affected areas, social marginalisation, and rural agrarian crises. The evidence from cyclone-affected coasts of West Bengal, floodplains of Assam, tribal tracts of Jharkhand, drought-affected Bundelkhand, and climate-affected Himalayan districts indicates that environmental changes are contributing to a tightening of push factors that are compelling women and teenage girls into informal work as domestic workers in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru. However, this is addressed piecemeal under India’s existing policies on labour, migration, and climate change.
This paper argues that climate change now functions as a threat multiplier within the already existing unequal structures of caste, tribe, class, and gender, amplifying distress migration into domestic work and deepening precarity at both origin and destination. It also proposes a policy agenda that explicitly recognises climate as a structural driver of internal migration, regulates and formalises domestic work with gender and migrant-sensitive protections, and connects climate adaptation, rural livelihood programmes and urban labour/housing policies into a coherent framework.
Keywords: Climate-induced migration, Domestic work, Feminisation of labour, Internal migration, Urbanisation
Introduction
Climate change has started to alter daily life and movement in India during the past few decades. India’s average temperature increased by roughly 0.89°C between 2015 and 2024 compared to 1901-30 due to systematic changes brought on by climate change. According to scientific models, there will be an extra 1.2–1.3 °C of warming by 2050 compared to 1995–2014. These climatic changes are impacting some of India’s most ecologically fragile regions, including the Sundarbans and Indo-Gangetic plains, the drought‑affected plateau of Bundelkhand, tribal districts of Jharkhand and central India, and the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (Dhara et al., 2025).
In the Indian Sundarbans, recurrent cyclones such as Aila, Amphan and Yaas, compounded by sea‑level rise and saline intrusion, have undermined smallholder agriculture and fisheries, pushing households towards migration as a coping strategy (Banerjee & Bose, 2025). Along Assam’s Chars and Chaporis, intensified monsoon floods and riverbank erosion have repeatedly displaced communities, with 2024 marking 2.5 million internal displacements due to floods in the state alone (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2024).
In Bundelkhand, repeated droughts and failed monsoons have generated large‑scale out‑migration from rainfed farming households (Niazi, 2018), while fact‑finding reports highlight a ‘man‑made drought crisis’ rooted in structural agrarian inequalities and neglect of traditional water systems (Perspectives, 2010). Mountain districts of Uttarakhand similarly experience erratic rainfall, glacial retreat and landslides, contributing to male out‑migration and the feminisation of both agriculture and vulnerability (Goodrich et al., 2019). Taken together, these studies illustrate that climate change is not a distant threat but a present, spatially uneven driver of livelihood insecurity across India’s rural and tribal geographies.
Contemporary climate–mobility scholarship stresses that environmental change rarely operates as an isolated ‘push’ factor; rather, it interacts with agrarian crises, indebtedness, social marginalisation and gendered labour markets to shape who moves, when, and into what kinds of work (The Impact of Climate Change on Human Mobility: Preventive Action, Humanitarian Action and Development, 2024). In India, this interaction is increasingly visible in the expanding flows of women and adolescent girls from climate‑stressed rural regions into informal domestic work in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, where they join a large but poorly regulated care workforce (Rahman, 2022).
National and city‑level estimates suggest that domestic work has become a central sector of women’s internal labour migration, with women comprising the majority of domestic workers and around half of internal female migrants in Delhi and Mumbai employed in domestic service (Saraswati et al., 2015). Region‑specific research shows, for instance, that tribal girls from Jharkhand increasingly migrate, often via informal placement agencies that blur the line between employment and trafficking‑like control (Tribal Study, 2025).
Dasgupta et al (2020) assessment on the Sundarbans and coastal Odisha indicates that climate-induced degradation of natural-resource–based livelihoods, particularly through salinisation and declining agricultural viability, has increasingly channelled women into urban domestic work, which often has significant risks of exploitation.
These climate-induced migration into Indian cities has caused slum populations to rise from 42.5 million in 2001 to 65.5 million in 2011, alongside growing socio‑spatial segregation and ‘degenerated peripheralisation’ of low‑value activities and habitats (Yadav et al., 2021) . Within this urban political economy, domestic work remains structurally informal, socially devalued as ‘unskilled’ women’s work, and weakly covered by labour regulation, leaving migrant women, especially from Dalit, Adivasi and other marginalised communities, exposed to low wages, abuse and exclusion from social protection (International Labour Organisation, 2015).
Recent developments indicate that reverse migration in India is once again being triggered by industrial slowdown and closures, particularly in labour-intensive sectors. Ongoing geopolitical disruptions, especially the West Asia conflict, have led to rising energy costs, supply-chain breakdowns, and reduced exports, forcing many small and medium industries, such as textiles, foundries, and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), to cut production or temporarily shut down.
This has directly affected migrant workers’ livelihoods, prompting a gradual return to rural areas. Reports suggest that energy shortages (especially LPG) and rising living costs in cities are making urban survival increasingly difficult for informal workers, leading to a slow but noticeable exodus reminiscent of the COVID-19 period (Bhushan, 2026). Additionally, industry bodies have warned that continued stress on MSMEs could accelerate job losses and further intensify this reverse migration trend.
Building on empirical and policy‑oriented work, the paper first outlines a conceptual framing of climate‑linked gendered migration into domestic work within broader processes of agrarian change and exclusionary urbanisation. It further traces regional dynamics and migration corridors from climate‑affected rural areas into domestic work in major cities, highlighting the role of caste, tribe and gender in shaping these pathways.
The subsequent sections examine India’s fragmented policy and legal architecture, covering domestic work regulation, internal migration and social protection portability, and climate and disaster policy, showing how these domains currently treat climate change, migration and domestic work in silos.
Finally, the paper proposes an integrated policy agenda that: (a) formally recognises climate as a structural driver of internal migration; (b) regulates and formalises domestic work through gender‑ and migrant‑sensitive protections; and (c) connects climate adaptation, rural livelihood programmes and urban labour/housing policies in ways that centre the rights and agency of migrant domestic workers.
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Tanvi is a criminologist with a BA in Psychology (Hons) from Delhi University and an MA in Criminology, specialising in Forensic Psychology from National Forensic Sciences University, MHA. She has worked on research and policy-focused projects during her internships with the National Commission for Women and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, exploring issues at the intersection of gender, crime, and justice. Beyond her academic and professional work, Tanvi is a trained musician, holding a Prabhakar degree in Music, and a passionate cinephile with a love for storytelling in all its forms. She finds inspiration in films, music, and art, using each as a way to explore and better understand people and the world around her.
