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This article explores the lives and labour dynamics of domestic workers in Delhi, focusing on their work in planned colonies and residence in jhuggi jhopri(JJ) clusters, or squatter settlements. Through narratives and in-depth interviews, it explores the complex interplay between these women’s employment and the broader urban landscape. The study investigates the intergenerational journey of domestic workers, tracing their migration from rural areas to urban centres in search of better opportunities. Further, it unpacks the realities of exclusion faced by domestic workers, residing in JJ clusters, which often lack legally secured tenure rights and access to basic amenities. The article examines the systematic flow of labour from JJ clusters to nearby planned colonies, where domestic workers play a crucial role in the functioning of households. Despite contributing significantly to the urban workforce, domestic workers remain in the shadows of planned development, enduring informality and inadequate legal protections. Through an interdisciplinary approach, this research highlights the socio-spatial dynamics that confine domestic workers to their settlements and restrict their mobility options. By understanding the intricate relationships between gendered work and urbanisation, this study aims to contribute to the creation of more inclusive and equitable urban spaces, shelter and employment in Delhi and beyond.

This article is based on an ethnography of the railway siding at Raxaul Junction railway station, a town on the Bihar–Nepal border, which finds itself at the intersection of a massive logistical exercise by China in the form of the Belt Road Initiative, counter-logistical apparatus building by India and incremental hardening of an otherwise ‘open’ border by Nepal. The article will analyse in detail the intricate network of the labour market that operates at and through the railway siding. It will also trace the origins of commodities used in the cement factories in the industrial corridor of Nepal that are extracted from some of the most deprived regions of India at great human and social costs. Finally, I will describe some of the latest exercises in logistical operations such as containerisation, opening of a new land port, the Integrated Check Post in Raxaul and operationalisation of a new dedicated freight corridor from Vishakhapatnam port to Raxaul, which is reconfiguring the logistical arrangements away from Kolkata and Haldia port and their implications on labour and labour practices. The Raxaul railway siding will be, hence, studied on multiple scales: global, national and local. The article will also try to understand the transformation of this very peculiar border town located on a unique border. This transformation is creating new labour processes, migratory processes and networks, and new modes of production of workers’ subjectivities and resistance along the global logistical apparatus and supply chains. It will also open up the possibilities of thinking conceptually about ‘South Asian Border Systems’.

Oil played a significant role in fuelling the sociopolitical and economic development of Middle Eastern nations, attracting mass migration from South Asian nations. The article draws a nexus between the energy dynamics and labour exploitation within these petroleum-rich nations. It undertakes a close reading of the text Birdsfrom Deepak Unnikrishnan’s novel Temporary Peopleas it depicts the lives of migrant labourers who navigate an exploitative petro-capitalist system. The fictional text employs a narrative strategy juxtaposing elements of magic and realism, opening up a space for multilayered marginalised voices. The article engages with energy theories and interweaves Mbembe’s theory on necropolitics to grasp oil’s sovereign influence in delineating the boundaries between life and death in migrant lives. The surplus energy generated through fossil fuel extraction contributes to notions of boundless growth, coupled with technical and economic progress, which conceals the intensive manual labour underpinning these petrocultures. The magical property alluded to oil and the spectral absence of labour in the socio-cultural imagination co-constructs an exploitative and dehumanising labour regime for migrants. The migrant body is kept alive, and their existence is contingent upon the instrumental value of their labouring body, which constructs them as easily disposable and expendable as they are positioned outside the formal boundaries of citizenship.

Radmila Švarˇícˇková Slabáková (Ed.), Family Memory: Practices, Transmissions and Uses in a Global Perspective(New Delhi: Routledge, 2021), 260 pp. £36.99, ISBN: 9780367701741 (Paperback).