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Labour migration and dislocation in India’s silicon valley

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  • Bowers, Rebecca

Abstract

The migrant families who build India’s cities do so to meet practical and ritual aspirations rooted in the village, undergoing spatial and temporal fragmentation to maintain rural longevity and the possibilities of ritual time. This article contributes an alternative position to linear-framed presumptions of migration and urbanity, illustrating instead how everyday experiences of dislocation can be productive through labor, timespace, and imagination; bridging the gulf between residence on urban construction sites in Bengaluru, southern India, and desired village homes. However, lived experiences of dislocation remain stratified by gender and class, leading to highly conjugated experiences of precarity, mobility, and possibility. Despite the urban ambivalence felt by women and girls as a result, a shared experience of dislocation enables entire families to undertake the grueling yet regenerative work of circular migration, ensuring the continuation and renewal of village life and ritual time through its incompleteness.

Suggested Citation

  • Bowers, Rebecca, 2021. "Labour migration and dislocation in India’s silicon valley," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113446, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:113446
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/113446/
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emma Jackson, 2012. "Fixed in Mobility: Young Homeless People and the City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 725-741, July.
    2. Breman, Jan, 2016. "On Pauperism in Present and Past," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199464814.
    3. Ashwini Deshpande & Naila Kabeer, 2019. "(In)Visibility, Care and Cultural Barriers: The Size and Shape of Women's Work in India," Working Papers 1016, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor migration; gender; dislocation; timespace; construction work;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • N0 - Economic History - - General

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