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Seasonal migration, employer-worker interactions, and shifting ethnic identities in contemporary West Bengal

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 17:02 authored by Ben RogalyBen Rogaly, Daniel Coppard, Kumar Rana, Abdur Rafique, Amrita Sengupta, Jhuma Biswas
This article tells of changing social and spatial identities in the countryside of con temporary West Bengal. It draws on a study of interactions between those seeking wage work in agriculture and the people trying to recruit them. We find a continuing and nested process of both self-identification and categorisation. Unconscious as well as conscious ethnic affinities are consolidated and changed. At the same time, identities are used instrumentally by workers to make the outcome of negotiations less demeaning, and by employers to bargain more effectivelyfor the workforce they need. The context is one of the emergence of capitalist production relations in agriculture, presided over by a coalition government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The newly pros perous agriculture has been a source of wealth for capitalist employers, reinforcing constructions of difference in relation to the migrant workers they employ. At the same time, many employers are attracted by the prospects of urban,jobs and life-styles and invest in their children's education. Migrant workers show a similar ambivalence, being attracted by the potential earnings and consumption possibilities arising out of being employed in the West Bengal 'rice bowl', and simultaneously repelled by the dangers they associate with the place.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Contributions to Indian Sociology

ISSN

0069-9667

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

1-2

Volume

37

Page range

281-310

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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