Abstract
This Book Forum features four recent books on the intersecting topics of Indian migration, labor, and class. Spanning disciplines that include anthropology, sociology, and political economy, the books examine different classes of migrants and feature multiple migration corridors at the domestic and global levels. The books carefully represent and analyze the experiences of highly educated Indian workers and their spouses migrating westward and of craftsmen and poorer, vulnerable workers migrating to other areas within the country or to the Gulf. The books also explore government policies that shaped those migration flows, and especially the nexus between class and migration in India.
For this Forum, the four book authors were invited to engage with each other’s books in an effort to spark conversations that bridge these different spaces of migration. Vivek Chibber, author of The Class Matrix, was invited to serve as a discussant on the Forum.
Book Publication Details
Agarwala, Rina. 2022. The Migration-Development Regime: How Class Shapes Indian Emigration. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9781479852918, $89 (hardcover); 9781479841042, $32 (paperback).
Banerjee, Pallavi. 2022. The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program. New York: New York University (NYU) Press. ISBN 9781479852918, $89 (hardcover); 9781479841042, $32 (paperback).
Chambers, Thomas. 2020. Networks, Labour and Migration among Indian Muslim Artisans. London: University College London (UCL) Press. ISBN 9781787354555, $57 (hardcover); 9781787354548, $32 (paperback); 9781787354531, open access PDF.
Chibber, Vivek. 2022. The Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674245136, $36 (hardcover).
Parry, Jonathan. 2020. Classes of Labour: Work and Life in a Central Indian Steel Town. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138095595, $200 (hardcover); 9780367510329, $54.95 (paperback); 9780203712467, $49.45 (e-book).