Work-Life Balance of National Migrant Workers in the Industrial Sector

Abstract

Internal (national) labour migration has become one of the defining features of industrial employment in developing economies, with tens of millions of workers moving from rural and economically weaker regions to industrial hubs in search of livelihood. While this movement sustains manufacturing, construction, textile, and processing industries, it imposes a distinctive set of pressures on the personal, familial, and social lives of the workers who undertake it. This paper examines the work-life balance (WLB) of national migrant workers employed in the industrial sector, drawing on secondary data, published empirical studies, and government reports to build a comprehensive analytical account of the phenomenon. The study situates migrant workers' WLB within established theoretical frameworks — role conflict theory, the spillover-compensation model, and the boundary theory of work and family — and examines how migration status compounds the ordinary tensions between paid work and personal life. Key factors analyzed include long and irregular working hours, absence of family and social support networks at the destination, substandard housing and living conditions, wage insecurity, restricted access to childcare and healthcare, linguistic and cultural isolation, and weak legal protection. The analysis further disaggregates the experience by gender, sector (textiles, construction, plywood and timber processing, manufacturing, and services), and migration pattern (circular, seasonal, and long-term). The paper finds that migrant workers in industrial settings systematically report lower work-life balance than their non-migrant counterparts, driven primarily by the erosion of informal support systems that typically buffer work-family conflict, and by employer and policy environments that treat migrant labour as a transient input rather than a stable workforce requiring welfare investment. The study concludes with policy-level and organisational-level recommendations, including portable social security, on-site welfare infrastructure, working-hour regulation, and inclusive human resource practices, and identifies directions for future research, particularly longitudinal and mixed-method studies that can track how work-life balance evolves over the migration cycle.