Migrant construction workers in Bhutan: Understanding Immigrant flows and their perceptions

Abstract

In this article, I describe, with the help of ethnographic vignettes, the lives and experiences of the Indian migrant labourers working in the construction sector in Bhutan. In so doing, I show how Bhutan has become a ‘place of hope’ for the construction workers, offering them ample reasons to stay on, for the maximum duration they desire. Furthermore, I position my argument in the larger pattern of the plains’ populace mobility into the hills, in their search for ‘new places for their survival’.