This article, drawing on fieldwork in Calcutta in the early 1990s, focuses on the variety of ways in which migrants'encounters with modernity have been structured and perceived. It takes 'modernity' as referring to a set of conditions relating to industrial work and living in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Rather than criticising the notion of modernity, it unpacks it and tries to show how different groups of migrants may have differentially perceived their move from countryside to city. It describes the relative continuity between rural and urban work, illustrated in a continuity of livelihood strat egies straddling rural and urban areas. It then goes on to describe how the experiences of labour migrants differed according to—and were structured by-gender, generation, regional, religious and caste backgrounds and identities.
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