Do Rural Migrants Divide Ethnically in the City? Evidence from an Ethnographic Experiment in India

Despite rapid urbanization across the Global South, identity politics within rural-urban migrant communities remains understudied. Past scholarship is divided over whether village-based ethnic divisions will erode or deepen within diverse poor migrant populations. The researcher assessed these divergent predictions through an ‘ethnographic survey experiment’ (N=4,218) among unique samples of poor migrants in India. Contra conventional expectations, the researcher found intra-class ethnic divisions are neither uniformly transcended nor entrenched across key arenas of migrant life. The Principal Investigator (PI) had mapped over 250 chowks (informal labor spot markets at road crossings, overpasses, and marketplaces) across the cities of Lucknow, Delhi and Gurgaon from where about 40 were selected for conducting the survey.