City Lives, Rural Ties

Stories of migrants building precarious futures through ingenuity, desire, obligation, and resilienceIndia’s cities depend on millions of rural migrants whose labor sustains urban life. City Lives, Rural Ties brings their overlooked stories into focus through vivid portraits of migrants who have forged footholds in cities such as Delhi and Hyderabad while remaining strongly connected to rural homes.Neither the most privileged nor the most destitute, they occupy an often-ignored middle ground. Vinay Gidwani and Priti Ramamurthy call them “middle migrants”: people who balance unstable urban livelihoods with enduring obligations to family and community in the countryside. They navigate uncertain work, precarious housing, and shifting aspirations while sustaining complex networks of care and support that stretch between village and city.The stories illuminate dreams of dignity, education, and independence along with the daily improvisations required by the informal economy. Women’s strategies for maneuvering emerge as especially powerful threads. Combining ethnographic insight with compelling storytelling, City Lives, Rural Ties offers a deeply human portrait of lives lived between places, possibilities, and responsibilities.