Event Details

The workshop invites a discussion on historical and contemporary labour regimes and urban politics in relation to different forms of work implicated in the production of the city.

Our workshop — linked to an ongoing ESRC project — invites contributions that discuss the lived realities of urban workers, whose labour in the production of city-space is often marked by contradictions of in/visibility, and whose methods of accessing city-space are stuck between regimes of legality and illegality or legitimacy and illegitimacy (Chhabria,2019). Such workers are not only inadequately renumerated but also marked by marginalisation of caste, race, religion, gender, alongside class. Their livelihoods put them in harm’s way, through exposure to health risks and accidents, threats to identity, and abuse through moral policing and social stigma accruing to work that is considered ‘unclean’.

The workshop invites a discussion on historical and contemporary labour regimes and urban politics in relation to different forms of work implicated in the production of the city. While we draw upon Gidwani’s (2015) conception of infrastructural labour – the infra marking both the crucial labour of urban reproduction and labour that is denied visibility and recognition — we broaden our argument to incorporate several forms of labour, from sanitation and waste work to labour engaged in brick kilns, construction, ship-breaking, and sex work. We also recognise the fluidity of ‘the urban’ and its making, welcoming contributions that blur rural/urban binaries, from rural and peri-urban spaces, to larger towns and cities. The workshop will broadly have a South Asian focus, but we welcome contributions from outside the region recognising the wider thematic relevance of the subject. We invite inter-disciplinary contributions across several themes including but not limited to –

- Regimes of visibility and invisibility of labour, including presence or absence within historical archives, the politics of historical and contemporary representation against worker’s and community’s self-representation and organisation.

- Infrastructural and technological change in relation to co-evolving labour regimes (for example, con-tradictions between the introduction of sewer-cleaning machines and persistence of manual scavenging).

- Intersections of caste, class, race and religion in relation to shifting labour regimes including intergenerational change and occupational mobility

The workshop is intended as a first step in setting up a wider research network on this topic. Alongside presentations, we will discuss ideas for collaborative outputs and capacity building, including writing, applying for bids and conference panels. We would also like to support Early Career Researcher (ECR) applicants in preparing papers for submission (to journals of choice), via a follow-up (online) session.

Lunch and refreshments are provided on the day. Limited bursaries are also available to support travel (within the UK) to Lancaster University for ECRs (PhD students, Postdocs) and precariously employed scholars. Please send us a short write-up on what support you require (budget breakdown), with a short justification when submitting your abstract.