Climate Migration and Sexual Violence: Vulnerabilities of Women Migrant Workers from Bihar
摘要
With an increased pace of climate change in India, women from rural villages in flood- and drought-stricken Bihar are being pushed into migration for employment, leaving behind destroyed homes and livelihoods. Their migration is not just a survival imperative but also a trek with increased vulnerability to sexual violence, labour abuse, and disregarded for reproductive health. In Delhi, Mumbai, and Punjab’s urban slums, garment factories, and agricultural camps, these women are constantly at risk and exposed to unsafe situations, but their plight is invisible in the policy and legal sphere. This chapter explores how climate migration puts Bihari women at intersecting risks, analysing the implications for reproductive rights and how effective the current safeguards are. Based on ethnographic field research, interviews, and NGO case studies, it enhances the voices of migrant women’s lived experience and dissects legal proceedings in which justice has proved elusive. Employing ecofeminist and structural violence theories, the chapter exposes systemic failures, ranging from abusive landlords to poor healthcare and unaffordable justice that ensure continued harm. It concludes with policy implications of labour reforms, mobile reproductive healthcare, and increased implementation of gender-sensitive legislation, calling for a new vision of climate governance that puts the dignity and rights of migrant women at the forefront.