Visibilising the underbelly of global capitalism :

Abstract

At the annual Pravesi Bharatiya Diwas, the contribution of overseas Indians and the diaspora is celebrated but amidst the high achievers, presidents, and billionaires, ignored and invisible is the contribution of the low and semiskilled workers, especially female domestic workers at the lowest rung of the labour hierarchy of those who migrate to the Gulf and S. E Asian migration corridor. They expose themselves to working and living in a world of precarity, in the desperate hope of lifting their families out of poverty. The Gulf countries account for half of India's 18 million emigrants whose official remittances make up nearly a fifth of the total 87 billion USD overall remittance flows into India. Braving indebtedness, exploitative recruitment agencies, the uncertainties of fraud about jobs, wage theft, bonded labour and dire living conditions, health neglect, hunger, sexual harassment and even torture, migrant workers from South Asia risk their all to escape the hopelessness of unemployment at home in order to sustain their families living there.