"Beyond "Enclaves

Postcolonial Labor Mobility to and from Assam Tea Plantations

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2262771
AutoresAnna‐lena Wolf (0000-0002-4307-0506, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume43
Fascículo1
Páginas49-58
Data de publicação2022-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAnthropology of Work Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0883-024X • E-ISSN: 1548-1417
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/awr.12235
OpenAlexW4283204243
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas36

Labor mobility to and from tea plantations in India has been treated as an exception. Plantations continue to be imagined as unaltered enclaves with an immobile, bonded, or fixed labor force as their key feature. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in India, this article investigates forms of labor mobility to and from Assam tea plantations. While tea labor is not spatially immobile, I argue that spatial mobility does not necessarily lead to upward social mobility. Based on this observation, I reconsider the plantation in the twenty-first century in two ways: first, plantations are permeable and transforming spaces, due to ongoing labor mobility and evolving changes in the political economy of Assam tea production; second, certain forms of inequality and injustice attributed to plantation economies need to be located beyond the Plantationocene

Economic geography · Economics · Economy · Ethnography · Geography · Inequality · Injustice · Labor mobility · Labour economics · Political science · Politics · Social mobility · Social science · Sociology · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies