Migration and the invisible economies of care: Production, social reproduction and seasonal migrant labour in India

Alpa Shah,Jens Lerche

doi:10.1111/tran.12401

Abstract

This paper focuses on the processes of migrant labour exploitation which are crucial for capitalist growth and the inequalities they generate. Ethnographic research conducted in different sites across India shows how patterns of seasonal labour migration are driven by class relations marked by hierarchies of identity (caste and tribe) and the spatial geopolitics of internal colonialism (region) – differences that are mobilised for accumulation. Labour migration scholarship has mainly explored sites of production. We extend recent social reproduction theory (SRT) and an older literature on labour migration and reproduction to argue that the intimate relationship between production and social reproduction is crucial to the exploitation of migrant labour and that this means we have to place centre‐stage the analysis of invisible economies of care which take place across spatiotemporally divided households, both in the place of migration and in the home regions of migrants. Furthermore, we develop recent work on SRT and migration to argue that an analysis of kinship (gender over generations, not just gender) is crucial to these invisible economies of care. This analysis is important in showing the machinations of capitalist growth and for political alternatives.

Highlights

It took one of the world’s most draconian COVID‐19 lockdowns to draw public attention to the plight but to the very existence of armies of vulnerable migrant workers
In a multi‐scalar analysis, we show how these invisible economies of care are underpinned by class relations marked by hierarchies of identity and the spatial geopolitics of internal colonialism which drive seasonal labour migration
Drawing on theories from the 1970s on labour migration and reproduction in sub‐Saharan Africa as well as recent social reproduction theory (SRT), we argue that this analysis should be extended across multiple scales – from nation to regions, into migrant households, and back out

Summary

Introduction

It took one of the world’s most draconian COVID‐19 lockdowns to draw public attention to the plight but to the very existence of armies of vulnerable migrant workers. The focus is on migrant labour at the very bottom of labour hierarchies – low‐caste and tribal people who seasonally migrate within India, leaving their homes for a few months a year to take up low‐wage precarious work in faraway brick factories, sugar‐cane fields, or construction sites, for instance.

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