Center for Women’s Studies, SSS, JNU
Invites you to a talk on
Who Cares?
The Political Economy of Migration for Domestic Work in South Asia
by
Dr. Neha Wadhawan
(Visiting Faculty at the School of Development Studies, B. R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi)
Date: 23rd April 2019
Time: 3:00 pm
Venue: Room No.324, SSS-I, JNU
Abstract:- Migrant women are ‘themselves means of production’ (Aguilar 2002). They also participate in the ‘physical, cultural and ideological production of human beings’ in racialised, classed and gendered ways (Anderson 2000). Conventional studies tend to depict migrant women as an issue that concerns the individual household, and, possibly, the local economy. Rarely do they focus on the complicity of the state, including those on the periphery of the world economy, in facilitating the exploitation of women’s reproductive labour by its propertied class specifically, and for transnational bourgeois capitalist interests, generally. Drawing upon quantitative and qualitative fieldwork in different parts of South Asia, this talk will challenge the notion that women are withdrawing from the workforce and argues that definitional and methodological issues prevent large data sets from capturing increasing women’s migration for work, especially paid and unpaid domestic work. Further, the discriminatory nature of laws and policies affecting women’s mobility for work, such as migration bans which have been introduced in many South Asian countries, will also be discussed.
Bio:- Dr. Neha Wadhawan is associated with the Work in Freedom programme at the International Labour Organisation in New Delhi. She holds a PhD in international politics from JNU and her research interests have focused on gender, labour, migration and citizenship in South Asia. She has taught as visiting faculty at the School of Development Studies, B. R. Ambedkar University, New Delhi from 2014-2016.