The labor of social change: Seasonal labor migration and social change in rural western India

Rai, Pronoy

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.04.015

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The critical common finding that emerges from both studies is that circular migration has enabled upward mobility for those at the lower rungs of the social and economic hierarchy in the village. These messages echo in more recent studies in western India that reveal that Dalits and Adivasi circular migrants take back with themselves not just skills in construction and savings, but also cultural icons of emancipation from the city to the village (Iyer 2017) and that seasonal labour migration has enhanced the ability of subaltern communities to assert themselves against landed farmers (Rai 2018).…”

Section: Unpacking Circular Migrationmentioning

confidence: 95%

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

Datta

2020

Ind. J. Labour Econ.

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Section: Unpacking Circular Migrationmentioning

confidence: 95%

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

Datta

2020

Ind. J. Labour Econ.

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“…I study the relations between seasonal migration, masculinities, and gender negotiations in Maharashtra state (see Figure 1), where rural populations have been impacted by long-term agrarian distress (Vasavi 2009). As a result, in Yavatmal district in Maharashtra, where I conducted this research, rural labor relations have been reshaped resulting in the reduced ability of farmers to negotiate down the wages demanded by laborers, increased ability of both returnee and non-migrant laborers to demand dignified conditions of work, and changes in 'farmer' subjectivity (Rai 2018). In Maharashtra, close to half of the population (around 61.5 million people) live in villages, where farming households own an average of 1.4 hectares of agricultural land (Government of India 2014).…”

Section: Season Migration and Gender Negotiations In Rural Maharashtramentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These have stratified the agrarian society both in terms of access to factors of production, and the experiences of discrimination, degradation, and humiliation over generations (Guru 2009), with the former telescoped among landed farmers and the latter among lower-caste landless laborers. Elsewhere, I have focused on other, related aspects of the connections between seasonal labor migration and social change in migrant home communities (Rai, 2018). Specifically, I have analyzed the returnee laborers' acts of resistance against their employers (landed farmers) in their own home villages.…”

Section: Protest Masculinity and The Gendered Exploitation Of Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonal masculinities: seasonal labor migration and masculinities in rural western India

Rai

2019

Gender, Place & Culture

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In this research article, I study seasonal labor migration in rural western India to understand gender negotiations in the course of labor migration. Based on qualitative research conducted in six villages in rural Maharashtra state in Western India during the early Kharif cropping season in 2014 and during Kharif and Rabi cropping seasons in 2015-16, I examine gendered labor in migrant home communities and at various rural and urban employment destinations, the relationship of labor to the social construction of masculinities, and gender negotiations across space. I show that in their home communities, the politics of resistance of returnee laborers can be understood by examining how returnee men deploy 'protest masculinities' to subvert claims on their body and labor by elite men who have historically been in a dominant relationship with the laborers. Yet, these protest masculinities are buttressed by the continued exploitation of women's labor. I also show the flexibility of masculinities. More broadly, I show that migrant destinations themselves are gendered spaces that are constructed by the active consensual work of women and male migrants and employers alike. Second, seasonal migrants enter migration cycles from rural spaces that are gendered, both in production and social reproduction. I find that rural workplaces are the preferred choice of destination for migrant women; a choice that migrant men find reasonable. This is so because rural destinations are already gendered as spaces conducive for social reproduction and discursively constructed in the same terms as the idealized woman subject.

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“…This research is part of a larger project to examine labor migration and social change in rural western India (Rai, 2013, 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Rai and Smucker, 2016). In Yavatmal district, I interviewed all the truckers and Muqaddams in five villages, and I conducted a focus-group discussion with truckers and Muqaddams in the sixth village.…”

Section: Cane Labor Migration In Maharashtramentioning

confidence: 99%

The geographies of intermediation: Labor intermediaries, labor migration, and cane harvesting in rural western India

Rai

2020

Environ Plan A

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In this paper, I explain the role of labor intermediaries in the weaving of capital–labor relations in capitalist agro-business. I do so by focusing on migration infrastructure or the vertical network of labor intermediaries who facilitate labor recruitment from migrant home villages and migrant labor disciplining on cane fields in rural western India, where the laborers are brought seasonally to harvest sugarcane. I show how the role of labor intermediaries cannot be understood by containing them within the villainous stereotypes associated with brokers. Intermediaries are embedded within the labor geographies of commodity production where capital accumulation requires the downward transferring of the risk of financial loss from capitalist agro-business to intermediaries and laborers. I collected data for this research by conducting interviews and focus-group discussions in the Yavatmal and Kolhapur districts of Maharashtra state in rural western India during summer 2014 and 2015–2016.

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The labor of social change: Seasonal labor migration and social change in rural western India

Cited by 19 publications

References 38 publications

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

Seasonal masculinities: seasonal labor migration and masculinities in rural western India

The geographies of intermediation: Labor intermediaries, labor migration, and cane harvesting in rural western India

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