Attachment, Aspiration, and Inequality in Domestic Labour in India

This novel volume presents an ethnography of the gendered dynamics of informal labour relations in three cosmopolitan cities in India—Kolkata, Delhi, and Noida—in order to analyse women’s agency and identity formation in the domestic labour sphere in India.

Structured around an extensive set of in-depth narratives from female workers and employers, chapters reveal how employers and workers use language to express reciprocal support and care. Novel in its focus on affect—including the emotions, moods, and atmospheres that emerge from, and shape, the conditions of labour—chapters demonstrate the mutual, bi-directional "affective attachments" and dependencies that are formed between employers and workers through practices of mutual care. The book explores the construction of gender identities among workers, in part shaped by a variety of other intersecting relationships, including caste, ethnicity, and religion. As well as an exploration of worker-employer relations within the employers’ homes, the book also examines the squatter settlements of workers, uncovering aspects of workers’ domestic lives, relationships with each other, and broader relationships between transregional and trans-border migrants.

Examining a space where gender, migration, language, and emotion intersect, this book will be of interest to researchers studying gender, South Asian studies, anthropology, labour studies, migration studies, and urban studies.