The intimate subsidies of left-behind women of migrant households in western India

Abstract

The term ‘left-behind’, often used to describe the wives of male migrants, is implicated in a male centric gaze that moves alongside the man as he migrates for work (often to cities), while the ‘left-behind’ women and rural economy recede into an obscure background as ‘dependents’ from his remittances. Locating our enquiry in the Adivasi (tribal), migrant households of southern Rajasthan in western India, we argue that this simplistic view betrays the complex exchanges that occur between the two ends of geographically split migrant households. We put forth a notion of ‘intimate subsidies’ to draw attention to these exchanges and the concealed modes through which the capitalist economy transfers scarcity, insecurity, illness and injury onto the migrant household, leaving it to be neutralized by the intimate labour of its women members. The ruthless commodification of Adivasi male migrants in India is well-documented. Here, we delve into its corollary – the parallel commodification of their wives’ labour as they renew, rescue and rehabilitate their marital homes from the assaults of a corrosive migration regime. We find that the intimate subsidies provided by migrants’ wives are camouflaged as age-old acts of marital love and duty, and are uncompromisingly demanded of them by patriarchal structures and relations. They are exacerbated by the socio-economic destabilization that Adivasi communities have experienced through colonial and post-colonial accumulation, while being and are instrumentalized by the husband’s capitalist employers in contemporary migration economy. The latter, however, remain unimplicated for extracting such subsidies – enjoying impunity by maintaining a strict separation from the social reproduction of migrant households.