Stolen citizenship, stolen freedoms

Abstract

Locating the rights of India's circular labour migrants Citoyenneté volée, libertés volées. Stabiliser les droits des migrants circulaires en Inde Ciudadanía robada, libertades robadas. Estabilizar los derechos de los migrantes circulares en India Cidadania roubada, liberdades roubadas. Estabilizar os direitos dos migrantes circulares na Índia

Migration and the invisible economies of care: Production, social reproduction and seasonal migrant labour in India

“…Seasonal migrants are also not eligible for elementary citizenship rights and welfare measures (cf. Abbas, 2016;Mander et al, 2019;Mander & Saghal, 2010). They cannot access rice, dal, and kerosene for the poor subsidised by the state's Public Distribution System.…”

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

“…The growing number of seasonal and circular labour migrants is disproportionately from historically deprived scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities (Srivastava 2019). Contemporary capitalism, thus, draws on labour market segmentation built on historical cleavages such as caste, class, gender, and religion to produce new forms of unfree labour and neo-bondage (Mander et al 2019;Breman et al 2009).…”

“…Their working and living conditions are precarious, and circular migrants experience acute social isolation and powerlessness in their work and life at destination (Datta 2018;Vijay 2005). This social exclusion is intertwined with their political exclusion; circular migrants are unable to participate in political processes in destination areas and tend to miss out on voting in elections in source regions (Mander et al 2019). Thus, despite their economic contributions to source and destination regions, circular migrants, themselves, are rendered second-class citizens, and the state is complicit in the keeping them in a state of 'incomplete citizenship' (Jeyaranjan 2017, p. 325).…”