You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
From ‘Plantation Workers’ to Naukrānī : The Changing Labour Discourses of Migrant Domestic Workers
:
The Changing Labour Discourses of Migrant Domestic Workers
Contributor:
Banerjee, Supurna
Published:
SAGE Publications, 2018
Published in:
Journal of South Asian Development, 13 (2018) 2, Seite 164-185
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1177/0973174118785269
ISSN:
0973-1741;
0973-1733
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
The tea plantations of Dooars in West Bengal are founded on a gendered division of labour. The recent economic crisis faced by the tea plantations brought long-established labour practices into question. Mounting expenses and closures led to rising migration of plantation workers to distant urban areas in North and South India, in search of alternative employment. Many of these women found employment as domestic workers and care workers in Delhi and Gurgaon. Drawing on the in-depth narratives of these migrant domestic workers, this article explores self-perceptions and representations of work and brings to the forefront the ongoing process of skill acquisition on the one hand and its constant invisibilization on the other. This reproduces paid domestic and care work not only as women’s natural labour but as low skilled and low status work that is particularly suitable for migrant women. The women’s own perceptions help problematize and nuance otherwise monolithic understandings of labour in general and domestic labour in particular.