New to the City: A Pilot Study on Migrant Job Search, Information Revelation and Technology

Urban populations in the developing world are expanding rapidly, driven, in large part, by rural migrants drawn by the promise of lucrative employment alternatives to agriculture. However, significant barriers often prevent new migrants, who have left behind their rural support network, from making a successful transition. This pilot study focuses on this population in Bangalore, India, a city undergoing rapid growth in both economic opportunities and population. Researchers will explore the potential for online and mobile technologies to expand awareness of opportunities and reduce the exclusion of new arrivals through addressing standard failures in markets for information. Working in partnership with an online job-matching start-up based in Bangalore, they will experimentally evaluate strategies to improve access to and the quality of information among employers and migrant jobseekers. Researchers hope to identify innovations that could be used to address barriers on both the demand and supply sides of the market at scale.