Training for employment or skilling up from employment? Jobs and skills acquisition in the Tiruppur textile region, India

This paper explores how skills for garment work are acquired in the rural hinterland of Tiruppur, one of India’s largest garment manufacturing clusters. Drawing on a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews with garment workers in Tiruppur’s hinterland, we document the informal pathways of skill acquisition for garment work and advocate a demand-driven approach to vocational training. Such an approach, first, unsettles linear policy assumptions about direct linkages between training, skills acquisition and access to decent and rewarding employment. We show how rather than being formally trained for employment, villagers gained skills from employment and upskilled themselves on the job. Such upskilling took the form of self-directed learning rather than formal training, and involved spatial and job mobility between companies and sectors. Second, a demand-driven perspective reveals how access to more advanced skills and more desirable jobs is shaped by the structural inequalities of gender, age and caste, which curtail the opportunities of women and the elderly in particular. Finally, policy and research would benefit from a demand-driven approach to training and recruitment that prioritises the skill development needs of local populations and that supports those whose participation in training and labour markets remains constrained by gender, age or caste.