Rishap Singh
Hyderabad stands as a symbol of modern Indian aspiration, its glittering Financial District acting as a beacon for white-collar professionals across the country. These skilled migrants, the software engineers, managers, and consultants, are the undisputed economic engines of Telangana. Yet, beneath this veneer of success, a qualitative investigation would unravel a disturbing paradox- such professionals are, in other words, invisible citizens, who are economically assimilated, but can be left out, socially and politically, on most occasions. Such an imbalanced relationship between economic contribution and civic recognition is a great threat to sustainable urban development.
The research focuses on the lived realities of this highly mobile population. While they do not face the debt migration and acute poverty endemic to the informal labor sector, they negotiate a subtler, yet persistent, form of precarity. Many white-collar professionals cluster in exclusive gated communities surrounding the corporate hubs. Although such segregation guarantees security, it is an active process that restricts integration and develops a feeling of otherness and supports societal exclusion within the broader urban landscape.
Lived Realities: The Dynamics of Identity and Exclusion
The lived realities of white-collar migrants demonstrate that economic success does not equate to civic integration or social belonging. Unlike informal workers who face material precariousness, skilled migrants face profound non-material precarity rooted in identity negotiation and spatial segregation.
Migration, even for the highly educated, is inextricably linked to pre-existing socio-economic structures, where factors like caste, class, and regional origin continue to shape status and political position in the destination city. This means that professionals often feel compelled to engage in strategic identity concealment to achieve professional and social integration within Hyderabad’s cosmopolitan corporate culture. This is a process that can be compared to events experienced by other groups, such as Odia Dalit migrants who tactically deny their caste (identifying as OBC or Khandayat) to avoid being discriminated against and having the fear psychosis of their status of origin. This pressure to perform a neutral, pan-Indian, corporate identity carries a significant, though hidden, social and emotional cost, challenging the perception of “successful integration.”
Furthermore, the urban landscape of Hyderabad contributes to this dynamic. The massive influx of high-skilled professionals has led to the development of exclusive gated communities in the Financial District peripheries. While these communities offer enhanced security and class-based segregation, this physical separation paradoxically reinforces social exclusion. By restricting daily interaction with the wider Hyderabadi civic life, these enclaves foster a sense of “otherness.” As seen in other Indian cities, this dialectic of inclusion (economically) and exclusion (socially) can promote a sense of alienation and a perception among migrants of being merely “people like us,” professionally valuable but socially and civically isolated.
Table 1:- Highlights the distinct manifestations of exclusion experienced by the white-collar demographic compared to general migrants.
| Domain of Exclusion | General Migrant Manifestation (Structural) | White-Collar Migrant Manifestation (Qualitative/Subtle) |
| Social Exclusion | Lack of community, stigma, inability to access local support. | Isolation in exclusive residential enclaves (gated communities ), perceived ‘otherness,’ lack of belonging, and professional segregation. |
| Civic/Political Exclusion | Lack of voting rights, absence of representation in urban planning. | Low engagement/apathy towards local governance, institutional difficulty in securing local civic documentation (e.g., voter ID transfer). |
| Economic/Employment Exclusion | Exploitative debt-migration, informal labor, low wages. | Vulnerability during macro-economic shocks (e.g., job loss without local relief access ), lack of portability of state-level professional benefits/licenses. |
| Social Protection Exclusion | Exclusion from PDS and basic | Difficulty accessing |
| health schemes due to lack of documentation.12 | state-specific portable health schemes (e.g., state insurance/subsidies), lack of portability for private-sector retirement/pension schemes across state borders. |
Furthermore, the need to fit into the cosmopolitan, professional culture often forces an internal negotiation of identity. As vulnerable migrants plan how to conceal their caste identity to avoid discrimination, so do privileged professionals who may feel pressured to flatten their regional or linguistic identity to keep up with a neutral and pan-Indian corporate ideal. This ongoing process of strategic identity concealment carries a quiet, yet significant, social and emotional cost, challenging the perception that economic mobility automatically translates into complete social acceptance (Mahanirban Policy Briefs, 2016).
Systemic governance failures magnify this policy problem. Current government welfare policies in Telangana demonstrate a commendable focus on international returnees (through Migrant Resource Centres) and addressing external migration challenges. However, the specific regulatory hurdles faced by internal skilled migrants, namely, the difficulty in ensuring portability of social protection schemes, transferring voting rights, or accessing relevant policy information, are overlooked. The system presupposes that economic capital of high levels cancels the necessity of institutional support, which makes these groups of people politically invisible and inaccessible to the decision-making process. The ability to have biometric identification (Aadhaar) provides them with identity, yet not the extremely important fluidity of rights demanded to move freely within the federation (IOM, 2015).
My Participatory Action Research (PAR) fellowship aims to address this policy vacuum by treating these skilled professionals not as passive subjects of study, but as active partners in governance.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, skilled groups such as software engineers and professors exhibited exceptional organizational potential and coordinated intricate logistics, and offered necessary facilitative roles to thousands of suffering migrants. Such a high social capital is a priceless reserve of governance innovation.
The resulting action framework proposes channeling this capacity into sustained institutional structures.
Key actions include:
- Establishing a Skilled Migrant Civic Forum under the municipal body to formalize the input of these professionals into urban planning.
- Adapting existing Migrant Resource Centres to provide specialized guidance on portability, regulatory issues, and civic engagement tailored to the high-skilled workforce.
- Advocating for policy harmonization to ensure social security and civic rights are truly portable across state lines (Lal, 2021).
Hyderabad can be at the forefront in making the governance models in India that consider and actively incorporate the skilled and mobile workforce. Sustainable urban development requires that we consider not only the economic value of our citizens, but also their entitlement to complete civic and social integration (Poppelaars & Scholten, 2008). The time has come to ensure that the citizens who build our IT economy are fully recognized as integral builders of our urban society.
References
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford University Press. Retrieved from https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Modernity+and+Self-Identity%3A+Self+and+Society+in+the+Late+Modern+Age-p-9780745666488
Glick Schiller, N., & Çağlar, A. (2011). Migrant incorporation and city scale: Toward a new research agenda. In M. A. P. (Ed.), Migration and the urban (pp. 21–46). Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/33691522/Migrant_Incorporation_and_City_Scale_Towards_a_Theory_of_Locality_in_Migration_Studies
Gupta, S. (2014). Economic aspirations of rural-urban migrants in India. International Journal of Social Research, 14(2), 112–128. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/29348720/Socio_Economic_Causes_of_Rural_to_Urban_Migration_in_India_pdf
Gidwani, V., & Sivaramakrishnan, K. (2003). Circular migration and rural cosmopolitanism in India. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 37(1–2), 339–367. https://doi.org/10.1177/006996670303700114
International Organization for Migration (IOM). (2015). Migrants and cities: New partnerships to manage mobility (World Migration Report 2015 Background paper). Retrieved from https://www.un-ilibrary.org/content/books/9789210575027
Lal, P. (2021). Road map for developing a policy framework for the inclusion of internal migrant workers in India. Rural India Online. Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—asia/—ro-bangkok/—sro-new_delhi/documents/publication/wcms_763352.pdf
Mahanirban Policy Briefs. (2016). Social, economic, and political position, status, and power of migrants. Retrieved from http://www.mcrg.ac.in/RLS_Migration_2024/Policy%20Brief-2.pdf
Poppelaars, C., & Scholten, P. (2008). Two worlds, two realities: The local turn in migration governance. International Development Planning Review, 24(4).
Odia Dalit migrants in Hyderabad City: A case study. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359560244_Odia_Dalit_Migrants_in_Hyderabad_City_A_Case_Study
About the Contributor: Rishap singh is pursuing Master’s in Public Policy and Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad.
Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organisation.
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Acknowledgement: This article was posted by Aashvee Prisha, a research intern at IMPRI.
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