Books Chapters

‘Here, We Are Addicted To Loitering’: Exploring Narratives of Work and Mobility Among Migrant Women in Delhi

Land, Labour and Livelihoods Springer International Publishing SONAL SHARMA and EESHA KUNDURI 2016

This chapter analyses how migrant women in two specific kinds of paid work—industrial/factory work and home-based work—articulate, understand and perceive economic, social and spatial mobility. Drawing upon fieldwork among women workers living around two industrial estates in the city of Delhi, this chapter argues that the economic agency brought about by paid employment is situated within and shaped by the spatial mobility offered by the city, and the enabling nature of city spaces in relation to the rural. The narratives bring forth complex articulations of social status and honour which, while always being relational to the meanings attached to the rural, call for new ways of understanding and engendering the concept of mobility for migrant women.

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