Migration has been most vibrant component of demographic, brings sudden and most dynamic change within an economy. On one hand it indicates economic development and on the other reveals the imbalance development in a country especially where the migrants are mostly labour class people, living with bare necessities at the place of destination. A study has been conducted in Delhi on the constructional migrant workers focusing on their living condition and health care behaviour at the place of destination. 87 per cent are in the age group of 18–40 years, symbolizing stress migration. They come looking for some sort of regular-paid work in urban centres atleast for whole of one season during which they would not be engaged in fields back home. Urban centers with new development work requiring semi-skilled and unskilled workers act as pull factor. Besides being the basic input for economic and industrial development at the country, the construction sector provides numerous employment opportunities to the poor especially from the rural areas as unskilled labor as well skilled labor.
This paper is an empirical study covering living condition and health care practice among migrant constructional workers at the destination using mixed methodology. The study focuses around the health problem and treatment behaviour of these workers. As a human capital, health forms to be the key component in creation of wealth or income. Lack of social security and low level of income compels them to compromise with duration and type of treatment. Vulnerability factor which usually lies is the fact that their origin differs from the place of present urban residence resulting in adverse association of migration and utilization of healthcare services. Making it utmost important to examine the treatment pattern and factors influencing such treatment behaviour among migrant constructional workers.
The study was a pilot study for project on “Accessibility and utilization of health care services among migrants” carried out in 2011. It was conducted in National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi. In the present study migrant construction workers has been considered as sample. These samples were identified from 6 construction sites out of which 2 were government building, 1 was residential quarter constructed by private company, 1 of them was an over bridge construction and last one was a commercial building, shopping mall. The sites selection was done by dividing Delhi into 5 clusters. These clusters were basically administrative zones. Atleast one site was selected from each zone. After selecting the sites which totally lied on the permission of the concerning authority at the construction site data was collected from 150 construction workers. This was totally on convenience as data was collected from work place of the migrant construction workers.
