The op-ed ‘Caste and Labour Migration’ by Ayushman Bhagat and Ankita Shrestha (The Kathmandu Post, December 21, 2025) makes some strong, albeit unfounded allegations against the Nepal Labour Migration Report (NLMR) and its authors. This article, on behalf of the research team and the organisation that provided technical support in preparing the report, the Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility (CESLAM) at Social Science Baha, responds to these allegations while also highlighting what is covered in the report and what can be done further to improve Nepali migrant workers’ experiences.

Allegation 1

"The authors … signal that caste identity has no bearing on migration in Nepal."

Let’s begin with a simple question: Do social science researchers in Nepal really need to be lectured in 2025 to acknowledge the significance of caste (and ethnicity, which the writers do not recognise as separate from caste) in the analysis of any social issue in the country, let alone labour migration? It is a quarter century too late to mention it as breathlessly as the author duo has. For it has been that long since the discourse on caste/ethnicity issues gained prominence in Nepal, with Social Science Baha at the very forefront of fostering dialogue.

Instead of hastily reaching an unfounded conclusion, Bhagat and Shrestha could have genuinely tried to understand why data on caste/ethnicity is missing from the report in the first place. A reading of the report itself would have informed them about the unavailability of data on caste/ethnicity and other socio-economic variables on the government’s data portals, including the Foreign Employment Information Management System (FEIMS), the primary data source for the report. That is a fact acknowledged by the institutional author of the report itself, the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security (MoLESS). As stated in the ‘Way Forward’ section of the NLMR, “Information management systems such as Shramsansar, FEIMS, the Foreign Employment Welfare Information Management System (FEWIMS) and the Nepal Port will be upgraded for the collection of comprehensive data on various socio-economic indicators.” (p. 86)

While the NLMR itself does not provide caste/ethnicity disaggregated data, the writers appear to have failed to notice how researchers at CESLAM have consistently treated caste/ethnicity as an important variable and examined its intersection with other socio-economic variables, such as gender, social class, geographic location, etc., in explaining people’s diverse migration experiences and outcomes. For instance, the migration profile we had prepared of Koshi Province shows how migration costs vary among different caste/ethnic groups and how migrant workers from Hills and Tarai Dalit communities are predominantly employed in jobs considered to be ‘low-wage’ and associated with ‘high risk’, and how these migrant workers finance their migration on high-interest loans at significantly compared to the Hill Caste group. Two of our recent studies (co-authored, respectively, with Sunam et al and Sugden et al) have also highlighted how migration aspirations are limited or migration comes at a great financial loss for the ‘underprivileged youth’ from the Dalit community and how the benefits of migration are unequal among people from different socio-economic backgrounds, with higher prevalence of debts and frauds observed among migrant workers from landless Dalit communities.

If they had cared to delve further into our research outputs, they would have understood how extensively we had dealt with the intersection of caste/ethnicity with the migration experience.

Allegation 2

"Almost 80 percent of the Nepali authors in the bibliography of the NLMR are elite upper-caste."

The bibliography contains a total of 106 sources, with government publications (38) and those of international and national non-government organisations (I/NGOs) (27), comprising nearly two-thirds. The others are from non-Nepali (18) and Nepali scholars (7), the media (4), international governments (2) and CESLAM (10). Since the NLMR is a migration status report of the government, the primary source of information was administrative data collected by the government. Our referencing of publications authored or co-authored by CESLAM researchers might seem like ‘self-citation’, but it should be noted that CESLAM produces high-quality policy research outputs relevant to the NLMR. Some other publications may not have been referred to in the report, but that would be because the purpose of the report was not to conduct an exhaustive review of the literature but to simply provide an overview of migration trends, focusing on two fiscal years. Neither was its intent to make any theoretical arguments nor identify research gaps. The writers also seem to have missed the point that the inclusion of limited publications authored by scholars from marginalised caste/ethnic groups in the bibliography could be indicative of a larger structural problem, and a more useful discussion would have been how to increase the involvement of scholars from marginalised communities in the study of labour migration (and other social issues) in Nepal.

It should be clear by now that the reason behind the absence of caste/ethnicity data in the report was neither to create nor “[To perpetuate] the myth that migration in Nepal is casteless” (allegation 3). Instead, the report has identified such a gap and calls for an upgrade of the existing migration data portals in Nepal and highlights the need to conduct periodic migration surveys to address such issues, points consistently emphasised by CESLAM in its research outputs.

Labour migration landscape

Despite weaknesses, the NLMR provides some important insights into the labour migration trends in Nepal. The labour migration landscape is gradually shifting, with an increasing number of both men and women migrating to destinations beyond the traditional ones. But, as the report shows, province-wise inequality is significant, with migrant workers from the relatively wealthier provinces of Bagmati, Koshi and Gandaki heading to better destinations and remitting home larger amounts on average compared to workers from Madhesh, Karnali and Sudurpaschim.

The report also documents the problems in labour recruitment, unhealthy and risky working environments for Nepali workers, reintegration challenges for returnees, available social protection coverage and challenges at home and in some key destinations, and some critical issues on the Nepal-India migration corridor. A major strength of the report is that MoLESS has acknowledged many important issues in the labour migration sector in Nepal, identified the areas of its engagement, and outlined improvement plans. These issues, however, are not comprehensive, and the report itself should be treated more as an evolving document that the next one can build on, just as the current one did on previous iterations.