Dr. Sunil Kumar (LSE)
Abstract:
Labour camps housing internal migrant construction workers can be conceptualised as ‘heterotopian’ spaces, following Foucault. I argue that they are one point in a continuum of the architecture of discipline and control. Interventions to address the exploitative nature of the working and living conditions in labour camps are complex, not least because: (i) construction moves in space and time; and (ii) labour moves, in and out of a given project, depending on skill requirements; and (iii) labour camps make their residents invisible and hard-to-access. In the Indian context, this complexity increases due to the regional and linguistic diversity of the migrant labour force. Using the Urbanisation-Construction-Migration (UCM) Nexus in South Asia (Kumar and Fernandez, 2016), I use a Foucauldian lens to argue that the ‘conundrum of collective action’ emerges from an extended architecture of control and discipline: (i) pre-construction control through cash-for-work advances; (ii), in-construction labour camp control and discipline through a combination of enclosure, panopticon and appeasement; and (iii) post-construction indebtedness. Collective action spaces are thus squeezed out of existence.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1043266726027845
