Contestation and constraint
Commuting domestic workers and their employers in contemporary Kolkata
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12985671 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lauren Wilks (0000-0001-5758-9942, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 546-561 |
| Publication date | 2022-05-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian History and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1947-2498 • E-ISSN: 1947-2501 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19472498.2022.2080319 |
| OpenAlex | W4281481859 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 25 |
The shift from live-in to live-out and part-time forms of domestic work has brought greater autonomy and bargaining power for many domestic workers in India, many of whom now live outside the cities where they work. At the same time, the advent of more impersonal and transactional labour relations has led to a series of everyday ambivalences and tensions, with workers and employers simultaneously embracing and resisting these more impersonal and transactional working relationships. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata and rural West Bengal, and engaging with debates about ‘servitude’ and ‘pragmatic intimacy’, this article explores the work-life accounts of commuting domestic workers in Kolkata. It illustrates the pragmatism with which commuting workers approach and negotiate work and employers, and how they value, inconsistently, both physical/emotional distance from and closeness to employers, depending on their circumstances, experiences, and needs. Job security is, as the article shows more broadly, a key concern for commuters given intense competition and high turnover; thus, while commuters sometimes leave jobs for new ones, in some cases gaining better employment as a result, in many cases they stay and ‘adjust’
Autonomy · Closeness · Competition (biology · Domestic work · Ethnography · Job security · Negotiation · Political science · Power (physics · Sex work · Social science · Sociology · Transactional sex · Wage · Work (physics · Employment and Welfare Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Appropriating Gender
Between women
Weapons of the Weak
Street Corner Secrets
Disrupting the ‘life-cycle’ of violence in social relations
English-speaking and Educated Female Domestic Workers in Contemporary India
From ‘Plantation Workers’ to Naukrānī
Portraits of Women’s Paid Domestic-Care Labour
Female domestic workers strategizing via commuting long distance
Untidy Gender
Adjust
Servile Sentinels of the City
Chicanas modernize domestic service
Masculinity, Femininity, and Servitude
"The Myth of Being "Like a Daughter
Cultures of Servitude
Paragons of Lifestyle
Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent
Permeable Homes
In, Against and Beyond Precarity
Thinking Sociologically About Kindness
Materialities of mundane care and the art of holding one's own
Master-Servant relations and the domestic reproduction of caste in Northern India
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |