 Identities and the City: Socialities amongst Migrant Domestic Workers in KolkataUrbee Bhowmik Indian Journal of Human Development, 2024, vol. 18, issue 1, 107-119 Abstract: Migrant subjectivities, experiences and agency have not received the attention needed within development studies discussions on migration, and gender remains to be mainstreamed within understandings of migration. This article attempts to contribute towards bridging these gaps by outlining the findings of a study that explored sociality amongst migrant domestic workers in Kolkata. It outlines experiences of living the migrant identity amongst women migrating from rural West Bengal to Kolkata as well as forms of sociality they engage in at the level of the everyday. Socialities with their employers at the site of paid domestic work allow them to lay claims to the city by drawing on identities based in the Partition of India, 1947. Drawing on the concepts of ‘beings’ from Amartya Sen’s capability approach and of the ‘right to the city’, originally formulated by Henri Lefebvre, the article captures two significant questions emerging from these socialities: those of identity and self, and relationship with the city. It further shows the interrelation between these two frameworks that becomes apparent in the context of what the above socialities imply for the women in the study. Keywords: Migrant women; domestic work; sociality; city; identity; Kolkata (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inddev:v:18:y:2024:i:1:p:107-119 DOI: 10.1177/09737030241239486 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Indian Journal of Human Development |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.