Beyond the Dormitory Labour Regime: Comparing Chinese and Indian Workplace–Residence Systems as Strategies of Migrant Labour Control

Charlotte Goodburn and Soumya Mishra
Additional contact information
Charlotte Goodburn: King’s College London, UK
Soumya Mishra: King’s College London, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2024, vol. 38, issue 2, 505-526

Abstract: This article explores two examples of worker housing in India, and compares these with China’s ‘dormitory labour regime’, arguing that these methods of labour accommodation are part of a broader, increasingly global, workplace-residence regime aimed at migrant labour control for the purposes of value extraction. Contrary to previous studies, it argues that China’s system is not unique, but part of the political economy of contemporary global capitalism. Although there exist historical and contextual variations between the two Indian case studies, drawn from the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) garment sector and the Andhra Pradesh electronics industry, as well as between the Indian and Chinese contexts, the aims and many of the outcomes are similar. Moving beyond a focus on the country- and space-specific ‘dormitory labour regime’ facilitates a broader understanding of the crucial role contemporary workplace-residence systems play in enhancing control of migrant labour for the benefit of global accumulation networks.

Keywords: China; dormitory labour; India; migrant labour; migration; workplace-residence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170221142717 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:38:y:2024:i:2:p:505-526

DOI: 10.1177/09500170221142717

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().