Migrants go virtually unnoticed in India. The country has 454 million migrants, 60 million of whom are inter-state labour migrants. However, at the national, regional, and global levels, there is a scarcity of comprehensive data on migrant workers.

Migrant workers are typically employed in the informal sector, performing unskilled labour in textiles, manufacturing, construction, hotel transportation, services, and domestic work. Migrants begin working at a young age, spending their days at work and returning home to perilous slum shelters where they share small rooms with 5–6 other people. They are politically invisible to urban planners because they are not enfranchised in the area where they work.