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ABSTRACT In some regions of India, three out of four households include a migrant. The effects of migration on individuals, households and regions add up to a significant impact on the national economy and society. Despite the numbers, not much is written on migration within or from India and its considerable costs and returns remain outside of the public policy realm. This paper reviews key issues relating to wage and work migration in India. It analyses the patterns, trends and nature of labour migration, reviews existing government and non-governmental policies and programmes, and briefly examines key policy issues and options. Since the spatial distribution of jobs is an important determinant of the decision of migrate we compute the location quotient to identify whether a district has a higher concentration of workers in agriculture, manufacturing, construction and services sector. After controlling for household and individual characteristics, we find that an individual is more likely to be a short term migrant if the individual is from a district with a higher concentration of workers in the construction industry. Using instrumental variable model, we find that short term migrants earn low wages compared to non-short term migrant. Following this we model the transition of short term migrant workers across industries drawing on the literature on transition measures developed to measure income and occupational mobility