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ABSTRACT
Domestic work has emerged as a widespread occupation amongst rural women migrating to urban cities in India for lucrative employment. Their accommodation is fraught with a challenging adjustment to the city as a space which is unfamiliar and isolating. I focus on the nature of the city and how migrants re-define it. Through this article I try to delineate the interrupted lives, or rather, the broken biography of the female worker as migrations from rural to urban areas create socio-cultural disruptions to her story. I postulate this disorienting exposure to an unfamiliar urban setting as an important requisite in situating her labour in middle/upper-class homes. Paid domestic work has commonly been understood as extensions of unpaid housework. She is familiarized into doing tasks by her urban employers. This familiarization however, at an ideological level, rhetorically questions female domesticity as she is re-trained into gendered roles that society has historically believed to be hers. Ethnographic research conducted at Jeevanlalbasti/working-class neighbourhood, located in an urban residential area of south Delhi, attests to this. Oral history as a methodological tool has allowed this study to account for upheavals experienced in social lives and interpret local histories of migrant domestic workers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Press Release Bureau of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India on National Policy of Domestic Workers; dated 07.01.2019 available at: https://pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1558848. (Last Accessed: 20 July 2020).
2 Throughout this article, I utilise words from the local Hindi language followed by suitable English translations.
3 All names in this article are fictitious, in order to preserve the identity of the basti as well as of the respondents.
4 Throughout this paper, I have referred to my field site as a ‘working-class neighbourhood/jhuggi-jhopri/basti’, as these were the commonly used terms by the respondents themselves. I have abstained from using the terminology of ‘slum’, except where authors whom I have cited have used it themselves.
5 Newspaper article titled ‘Farmers Meet Ahead of New Bill on Land Use’ available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Farmers-to-meet-ahead-of-new-bill-on-land-use/articleshow/6795686.cms (accessed on 03.08.2019).
6 Newspaper article titled ‘Government Plans 100,000 Homes in Rs.10–20 lakh Range’ available at: http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/govt-plans-100000-homes-in-rs-1020-lakh-range/424879/(accessed on 03.08.2019).
7 The website of Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DSUIB); ‘List of 675 JJ Bastis’ in Delhi; as updated on 03.10.2019. Available at: http://delhishelterboard.in/main/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/JJBastisList675.pdf.
8 Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DSUIB); ‘List of 675 JJ Bastis’ in Delhi; as updated on 03.10.2019. Available at: http://delhishelterboard.in/main/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/JJBastisList675.pdf.
9 Didi roughly translates to ‘sister’, which I used informally when addressing all female respondents at Jeevanlal basti.
10 Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Report of Working Group on Migration, January 2017, pg. 3 available at http://mohua.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/1566.pdf
11 Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Report of Working Group on Migration, January 2017, pg. 3–4 available at http://mohua.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/1566.pdf
12 At Jeevanlal basti, my conversations with the women workers were held in Hindi, as it is the local language. In this article, an attempt has therefore been made to roughly translate the oral narratives from Hindi to English.
13 A traditional garment worn by Indian women which consists of a long piece of cloth draped around the body.
14 My interview with Ganga had taken place in April 2017.
15 Gurgaon is a suburban city sharing boarders with Delhi, in the neighbouring state of Haryana. It is approximately twenty-five to thirty kilometres from Jeevanlal basti in south Delhi.
16 Pucca, roughly translated as solid, implied rooms/homes built with brick and cement.
17 Katccha homes referred to the use of tin or mud in the construction of temporary structures.
18 Karnataka (2004), Kerala (2005), Andhra Pradesh (2007), Tamil Nadu (2007), Rajasthan (2007), Bihar (2009), Odisha (2009), Assam (2013), Meghalaya (2013), Jharkhand (2014) and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (2007) (Ghosh et al., Citation2016, p. 105).