Every now and then, rotational labour mobility (RLM) is back in the news. It is an idea that never dies. In part, its endurance has to do with the economist Lant Pritchett, who has been promoting RLM for decades.
Here are some of the key tenets of the RLM theory: borders and attendant restrictions are here to stay; RLM is the best solution for poverty alleviation and in the interest of labour-exporting developing countries like India; and temporary migration is politically tenable for developed countries with significant anti-immigration sentiment as it separates immigration from citizenship and addresses labour shortages without permanently altering the socio-cultural composition of the host country.
RLM does sound like an elegant solution in theory. That is the reason that Manish Sabharwal and Chinmay Tumbe and even Pranay Kotasthane have written about this idea in 2024.
The idea is back in the news after the Ministry of External Affairs released the draft Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 for public consultation last month.
But does RLM even work? Does it address the rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the Western world, particularly, the US?
While separating citizenship track from the rotational labour immigration track may help assuage the fears of host communities regarding dilution or distortion of their national identities, the degree to which this would be successful is suspect.
Even though citizenship is central to modern nationalism, the latter goes beyond the former. The extended presence of Indian migrants and the attendant socio-cultural interactions with native communities may fuel anti-immigrant sentiment. It is moot whether anti-immigrant sentiment is only fueled because natives are unhappy about the expanding arc of permanent residency/citizenship or simply because of the mere presence of workers who look, converse and behave differently. If it is the latter, then RLM may not solve but in some cases even worsen the situation. Also, from a practical and optics point of view, how would natives distinguish between RLM and non-RLM workers without verifying documents on a case to case basis?
The fact that such workers — even if temporary — will still require some level of social security benefits funded by the governments (that is, taxpayers) may aggravate that sentiment. Temporary or not, an ‘alien’ worker’s presence would not address concerns that natives may have about local jobs being taken away by ‘outsiders’ from distant countries.