Migration and Well Being: An Exploratory Study of Delhi's Slums

We found that the workers in our sample have reasons to stay in the urban informal sector though their chances of moving into the formal sector may be quite limited. The reasons lie in the question of mobility of workers in terms of income and occupation. Regarding the income mobility, we found that higher income mobility was confined to very low levels of past income. However, some of those in higher income brackets in the past also experienced decline in their incomes. But what is noteworthy is that the percentage of that experiencing downward income mobility over time is much less than those who reported an increase in incomes. Therefore, the extent of upward income movement seems to exceed the downward income movement. But at the same time, workers have faced downward occupational mobility if the regular wage jobs are given the top priority. However, we cannot judge improvements only in terms of change in occupation categories; intra-occupational upward mobility in terms of income cannot be ruled out. From this point of view, we can say that the decision to migrate was not irrational at all even though these workers may be working within the informal sector their entire life.