Abstract

Abstract This paper explores themes of precarity, community, and treatment in the novel Homebound (2021) by Puja Changoiwala. The text foregrounds the experiences of migrant workers in India during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 as they walked home during a nationwide lockdown. The paper locates itself within discourses on health, differential treatment, and intersectional vulnerabilities which are compounded by factors including gender and poverty. It particularly highlights the concepts of precariousness and precarity as opening up multiple avenues for exploration of the migrants’ experience within the neoliberal political economy. The paper argues that it is the pre-existing precarities that are systemic, epistemic, and gendered, which aggravate the vulnerability of communities in a medical crisis. Furthermore, it looks at how social and medical treatment of the workers facilitates violence at the hands of those who perceive them as the ill-other – the police forces, the public, the healthcare workers, and the media. It also questions the logic that underlines spaces such as pandemic camps, which become sites of control more than care, and where medical treatment is inhered in socio-political biases and constructs. The paper argues that apprehending these experiences of socioeconomic and gendered precarities through literature can aid in developing a complex and sustained engagement with unequal socio-political systems that perpetuate violence and vulnerability.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.