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‘They Used To Go to Eat, Now They Go to Earn’: The Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration from Puruliya District in West Bengal, India
Author(s) -
Rogaly Ben,
Coppard Daniel
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/1471-0366.00060
Subject(s) - capitalism , peasant , wage , bengal , west bengal , work (physics) , ambivalence , wage labour , sociology , meaning (existential) , labour economics , economics , socioeconomics , political science , agriculture , geography , law , politics , mechanical engineering , psychology , social psychology , archaeology , engineering , bay , psychotherapist
This article uses migrant workers’ testimonies to analyse whether and how much the act of migrating seasonally for wage work has contributed to changing social relations. We investigate changes in the meaning of this kind of migration to workers involved in it over their working lives. The emergence of peasant capitalism in West Bengal from the 1970s resulted in more days work and higher wages for migrant workers. This made it possible for wage workers to view migration as a way of earning and accumulating a useful lump sum, rather than simply surviving through food payments during the period of work, as had taken place in the past. However, there was no general move away from the compulsion to earn a wage through hard manual labour. Through the testimonies, we explore the ambivalence of migrant workers towards changes in the relations of production at home and at the destination workplace.