Pankhuri Agarwal
Biographic Data
| ID | 309153 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pankhuri Agarwal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pankhuri |
| FAMILY NAME | Agarwal |
| SIGNATURE | AGARWAL P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5561-4304 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 7 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 7 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Fictions of Freedom
Fictions of Freedom emerges from the fact of anti-trafficking interventions having led to newer forms of oppressions and entanglements of bureaucracy. Situating the lives of sex workers and daily-wage earning labourers through a multi-sited ethnography in India, this book opens up an examination of the rescue industry alongside migration and informality, and how the lived reality of the workers is crowded with sociopolitical unfairness, individua…
Remote work and reorganization of household infrastructure in the Global South
Remote work scholarship treats work-from-home as individual adaptation, ignoring how households must reorganize to enable it. This individualistic bias proves particularly problematic for understanding Global South experiences where infrastructure deficits amplify household burdens. Examining 51 Indian IT professionals’ transition to remote work, we reveal how households reorganized across spatial, temporal, technical, surveillance, and emotional…
Coping with personhood limbo
Prevailing socio-legal structures create a state of personhood limbo for undocumented workers, where broader society undermines various aspects of their personhood in a way that prevents them from fully representing and embracing all dimensions of their selves in and around the workplace. But how do undocumented workers cope with personhood limbo? Drawing on interviews with undocumented workers and civil society workers in Italy, we identify spec…
From an Event to a Process
This article conceptualises rescue as a complex, relational process, rather than a singular, one-off event against 'modern slavery' and human trafficking. This processual understanding of rescue highlights the inter- and intra-group dynamics among and within saviours (state actors, NGOs), victims (rescued workers) and offenders (employers), and shows how competing motivations between and within these groups shape rescue outcomes. By shifting the …
What happens after 'modern slavery' rescues? A case of rescued bonded labourers in 'waiting' in India
What happens after rescue from modern slavery, the third largest organized crime in the world? The mainstream perspective suggests that people can be rescued and set free from slavery. This article challenges this assumption by arguing that rescue inflicts more violence and sends workers back to exploitative labour. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study of 31 workers in the informal sector (and 10 civil society and state officials) in India w…
State-Migrant Relations in India
Through a multi-sited ethnographic study of 30 internal migrants working in informal occupations in Delhi, I show that the everyday lived experience of these migrants in India is negotiated by multiple and often intersecting forms of inequalities and exclusion. To that end, I give an overview of their efforts to access available social welfare schemes. Their interactions with street-level bureaucrats and the paperwork (such as an Aadhaar card or …
Self-education and Collective Learning
This article describes the authors’ experience in forming an interdisciplinary online study group dedicated to collective learning on modern slavery and trafficking from a critical perspective. It proposes ideas for discussions and readings along with three main principles concerning the method and approach of creating such a group that can be relevant to researchers and practitioners. First, the creation of a safe and inspiring space, the dialog…
State-Migrant Relations in India
Through a multi-sited ethnographic study of 30 internal migrants working in informal occupations in Delhi, I show that the everyday lived experience of these migrants in India is negotiated by multiple and often intersecting forms of inequalities and exclusion. To that end, I give an overview of their efforts to access available social welfare schemes. Their interactions with street-level bureaucrats and the paperwork (such as an Aadhaar card or …
Coping with personhood limbo
Prevailing socio-legal structures create a state of personhood limbo for undocumented workers, where broader society undermines various aspects of their personhood in a way that prevents them from fully representing and embracing all dimensions of their selves in and around the workplace. But how do undocumented workers cope with personhood limbo? Drawing on interviews with undocumented workers and civil society workers in Italy, we identify spec…
What happens after 'modern slavery' rescues? A case of rescued bonded labourers in 'waiting' in India
What happens after rescue from modern slavery, the third largest organized crime in the world? The mainstream perspective suggests that people can be rescued and set free from slavery. This article challenges this assumption by arguing that rescue inflicts more violence and sends workers back to exploitative labour. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study of 31 workers in the informal sector (and 10 civil society and state officials) in India w…
Self-education and Collective Learning
This article describes the authors’ experience in forming an interdisciplinary online study group dedicated to collective learning on modern slavery and trafficking from a critical perspective. It proposes ideas for discussions and readings along with three main principles concerning the method and approach of creating such a group that can be relevant to researchers and practitioners. First, the creation of a safe and inspiring space, the dialog…
State-Migrant Relations in India
Through a multi-sited ethnographic study of 30 internal migrants working in informal occupations in Delhi, I show that the everyday lived experience of these migrants in India is negotiated by multiple and often intersecting forms of inequalities and exclusion. To that end, I give an overview of their efforts to access available social welfare schemes. Their interactions with street-level bureaucrats and the paperwork (such as an Aadhaar card or …
What happens after 'modern slavery' rescues? A case of rescued bonded labourers in 'waiting' in India
What happens after rescue from modern slavery, the third largest organized crime in the world? The mainstream perspective suggests that people can be rescued and set free from slavery. This article challenges this assumption by arguing that rescue inflicts more violence and sends workers back to exploitative labour. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic study of 31 workers in the informal sector (and 10 civil society and state officials) in India w…
Remote work and reorganization of household infrastructure in the Global South
Remote work scholarship treats work-from-home as individual adaptation, ignoring how households must reorganize to enable it. This individualistic bias proves particularly problematic for understanding Global South experiences where infrastructure deficits amplify household burdens. Examining 51 Indian IT professionals’ transition to remote work, we reveal how households reorganized across spatial, temporal, technical, surveillance, and emotional…
Coping with personhood limbo
Prevailing socio-legal structures create a state of personhood limbo for undocumented workers, where broader society undermines various aspects of their personhood in a way that prevents them from fully representing and embracing all dimensions of their selves in and around the workplace. But how do undocumented workers cope with personhood limbo? Drawing on interviews with undocumented workers and civil society workers in Italy, we identify spec…
From an Event to a Process
This article conceptualises rescue as a complex, relational process, rather than a singular, one-off event against 'modern slavery' and human trafficking. This processual understanding of rescue highlights the inter- and intra-group dynamics among and within saviours (state actors, NGOs), victims (rescued workers) and offenders (employers), and shows how competing motivations between and within these groups shape rescue outcomes. By shifting the …
Fictions of Freedom
Fictions of Freedom emerges from the fact of anti-trafficking interventions having led to newer forms of oppressions and entanglements of bureaucracy. Situating the lives of sex workers and daily-wage earning labourers through a multi-sited ethnography in India, this book opens up an examination of the rescue industry alongside migration and informality, and how the lived reality of the workers is crowded with sociopolitical unfairness, individua…
Sociology (5 works) · Sex work and related issues (4 works) · Work (physics (3 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (2 works) · Engineering (2 works) · Epistemology (2 works) · Ethnography (2 works) · Inequality (2 works)