Labour Migration, Capitalist Accumulation, and Feudal Reproduction: A Historical Analysis from the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Abstract

This paper engages with the long-running debate on the transition from farm-based livelihoods to capitalism in the context of labour migration. Tracing the historic evolution of modes of production in the peripheral Mithilanchal region of the Eastern Gangetic Plains, it notes how the economic processes which are today driving the peasantry into the labour force through migration are not directly connected to the process of capitalist accumulation in the diverse locales where labour is employed, as is somtimes implied in the research on classic situations of "accumulation by dispossession". The entry of the peasantry into the surplus labour pool is instead linked firstly, with a complex convergence of internal changes within a non-capitalist feudal mode of production on an economic, cultural and political level, and secondly, with the stresses brought about in the wake of expanding capitalist markets. The paper notes however that migrant labour still generates substantial profits for capitalism with a sharing of surplus between the latter, and landlord-money lenders. It argues that the relationship between modes of production in this context, is neither functional nor coincidental, and is linked instead with largerat times opportunisticclass alliances which have evolved to fit the current political-economic conjuncture.

Migration, environmental change and agrarian transition in upland regions: learning from Ethiopia, Kenya and Nepal

“…The costs of what Marx ([1933Marx ([ ] 2008 termed labour reproduction, including the costs of bringing up the labourer, their 'retirement', and support for non-productive household members, are provided by the peasant economy (Meillassoux 1981). This capacity for cyclical migrant workers to generate substantial profits through covering the reproduction costs of labour has been demonstrated in the context of West African guest worker migration to post-war Europe (Meillassoux 1981), migration in Apartheid South Africa (Wolpe 1982), and migration to Indian cities from the Eastern Gangetic Plains (Sugden 2019) and the Adivasi belt of central India (Shah and Lerche 2020;Singh 2007). Rural-urban migration in China has also led to lowering the cost of urban labour (Zhan and Scully 2018;Alexander and Chan 2004).…”

“…The peasantry from countries such as Nepal offered these states an ideal labour force. Their labour power could be reproduced through the agrarian system at home, keeping wages down, while short-term contracts would ensure it remains cyclical and they retain these links to their home communities (Sugden 2019). Government policy in Nepal since the 1990s has actively facilitated this migration through various acts and bilateral treaties with states in the Gulf, and other Asian countries such as Malaysia (Sijapati and Limbu 2012).…”

Brokering labour: The politics of markets in the Kathmandu construction industry

“…The construction labourers I worked with were in most cases not "pushed" from the poverty of their rural livelihoods into the cities scrambling for jobs merely to survive. Rather, their journey to Kathmandu, conditioned by the persistence of semi-feudal agricultural relations rather than direct dispossession (Sugden, 2019), was conceived as an opportunity to kamaune, earn wages, that they could repatriate to increase their families' wealth. The dynamic I describe thus differs in some crucial aspects from the work of Jan Breman and others who have chronicled the systematic dispossessions of agricultural communities throughout particularly northern India (Breman, 1993;Levien, 2018).…”