The COVID-19 lockdown in India did not create the migrant labour crisis but rendered visible a long-standing condition of exclusion, precarity and abandonment. This chapter examines the figure of the circular migrant labourer in the construction industry as both a productive economic subject and a politically invisible object of state regulation. It interrogates the paradox of visibility, where migrant workers remain central to urban economies yet are absent from legal protections and public welfare. Drawing on Thomas Nail’s kinopolitics, as well as biopolitical and necropolitical frameworks, the chapter situates the crisis of migrant labour within broader questions of mobility, governmentality and citizenship. It explores the inadequacies of existing labour legislation, such as the BOCW Act and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, alongside the limitations of relief measures during the pandemic. Through a critical reading of state policy, media reports, and secondary data, the chapter shows how the state oscillates between neglect and control, while migrant workers exercise agency through acts of dissent, including walking home. The chapter calls for a rethinking of labour governance that recognises the structural nature of migrant precarity and centres the political subjecthood of those who build and sustain India’s cities.