Migration, Identity, and Voting Behavior in Border Regions of India

This article discusses the impact of migration on political identity and voting behaviour in the border regions of India. Instead of seeing migration as just a demographic and/or economic phenomenon, the paper approaches it as a politically mediated phenomenon, and explores how its impacts rely upon historical memory, identity divisions, institutional rules, and party competition. The study takes a comparative qualitative approach using a structured, focused comparison of four cases: Assam, West Bengal, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, which were chosen to reflect variations across the cases in terms of the migration experience, the configuration of the borders, institutional response, and electoral mobilisation. The analysis is based on secondary sources such as the Census of India, government reports, institutional documents relating to elections and scholarly works on migration, ethnicity, citizenship, and voting behaviour. The paper suggests that migration is electorally salient because of demographic change framed within a security, religious, ethnic or linguistic lens, and when political actors transform such perceptions into organised narratives of inclusion or exclusion. In all the cases, five mechanisms are obtained: perceived threat, identity reconstitution, institutional regulation, clientelist incorporation, and spatial concentration. The article ends by suggesting that the politics of migration are not the same in all parts of India's borders, but will take different forms depending on the local histories, state power, party systems and citizenship laws. These findings have relevance for democratic inclusion, conflict-sensitive border governance, and designing fair documentation processes and enfranchisement.

migration, identity, voting behaviour, border regions, India, citizenship, electoral politics

1. Baruah, S. (1999). India against itself: Assam and the politics of nationality. University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. Baruah, S. (2020). In the name of the nation: India and its Northeast. Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Bhavnani, R. R., & Lacina, B. (2015). The effects of weather-induced migration on sons of the soil riots in India. World Politics, 67(4), 760–794. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887115000222 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Bora, B. (2024). The absent voters of India: Challenges and prospects for the enfranchisement of migrants. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. https://doi.org/10.31752/idea.2024.101 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Bose, S. (2003). Kashmir: Roots of conflict, paths to peace. Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Castles, S., de Haas, H., & Miller, M. J. (2014). The age of migration: International population movements in the modern world (5th ed.). Guilford Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Chakrabarty, A. (2024). Structural intersections, hierarchical citizenship and criminalization of the migrant in Assam. Critical Criminology, 32(2), 339–355. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-024-09787-z [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Chandra, K. (2004). Why ethnic parties succeed: Patronage and ethnic head counts in India. Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. Chhibber, P. K., & Kollman, K. (2004). The formation of national party systems: Federalism and party competition in Canada, Great Britain, India, and the United States. Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. Chhibber, P. K., & Verma, R. (2018). Ideology and identity: The changing party systems of India. Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

11. Deshingkar, P., & Start, D. (2003). Seasonal migration for livelihoods in India: Coping, accumulation and exclusion (Working Paper No. 220). Overseas Development Institute. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

12. Donnan, H., & Wilson, T. M. (1999). Borders: Frontiers of identity, nation and state. Berg. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

13. ubochet, L. (2023). Citizenship as burden of proof: Voting and hiding among migrants from India’s eastern borderlands. Citizenship Studies, 27(1), 107–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2109598 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

14. Gaikwad, N., & Nellis, G. (2017). The majority–minority divide in attitudes toward internal migration: Evidence from Mumbai. American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 456–472. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12276 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

15. Gaikwad, N., & Nellis, G. (2021a). Do politicians discriminate against internal migrants? Evidence from nationwide field experiments in India. American Journal of Political Science, 65(4), 790–806. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12548 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

16. Gaikwad, N., & Nellis, G. (2021b). Overcoming the political exclusion of migrants: Theory and experimental evidence from India. American Political Science Review, 115(4), 1129–1146. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000435 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

17. Government of India, Government of Assam, All Assam Students’ Union, & All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad. (1985). The Assam Accord. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

18. Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice. (2019). The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (No. 47 of 2019). The Gazette of India. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

19. Hazarika, S. (2000). Rites of passage: Border crossings, imagined homelands, India’s east and Bangladesh. Penguin Books India. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

20. Horowitz, D. L. (1985). Ethnic groups in conflict. University of California Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

21. Kanjwal, H. (2023). Colonizing Kashmir: State-building under Indian occupation. Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

22. Keshri, K., & Bhagat, R. B. (2010). Temporary and seasonal migration in India. Genus, 66(3), 25–45. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

23. Kone, Z. L., Liu, M. Y., Mattoo, A., Özden, Ç., & Sharma, S. (2018). Internal borders and migration in India. Journal of Economic Geography, 18(4), 729–759. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

24. Kumar, A., Dar, A., Banerjee, S., Dhar, S., & Behera, S. S. (2015). Inclusive elections in India: A study on domestic migration and issues in electoral participation. Tata Institute of Social Sciences. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

25. Kumar, A., & Dhar, S. (2021). Migration and inclusive elections. In A. Kumar & R. B. Bhagat (Eds.), Migrants, mobility and citizenship in India (pp. 51–64). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367765477-6 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

26. National Statistical Office. (2022). Migration in India, 2020–21 (Report No. 589, Periodic Labour Force Survey). Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

27. Nizam, A., Sivakumar, P., & Rajan, S. I. (2022). Interstate migration in India during the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis based on mobile visitor location register and roaming data. Journal of South Asian Development, 17(3), 271–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/09731741221122000 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

28. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. (2011). Census of India 2011: Migration tables. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

29. Pandey, G. (2006). Remembering Partition: Violence, nationalism and history in India. Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

30. Press Information Bureau. (2022, December 29). ECI ready to pilot remote voting for domestic migrants; migrant voter need not travel back to home state to vote. Government of India. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

31. Siddique, N., & Ramachandran, S. (2024). The punitive gap: NRC, due process and denationalisation politics in India’s Assam. Comparative Migration Studies, 12, Article 34. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-024-00393-0 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

32. Weiner, M. (1978). Sons of the soil: Migration and ethnic conflict in India. Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

• Block-Based Programming for Education: A Comprehensive Analysis of Visual Programming Environments in K-12 Learning
• Management of Academic Libraries and Client Satisfaction Towards Digital Utilization: Basis for Monitoring Library Operations in SOCCSKSARGEN Region.
• Revenue Leakages in TPA Insurance Claims and Corporate Claims: An Institutional Overview of Aster Prime Hospital, Hyderabad
• Technology and Innovation in Hospitality and Tourism: A Management Perspective
• Geospatial Distribution of Tarok Sacred Grove of Langtang North and Langtang South Local Government Areas