Who is a Construction Worker? Bureaucratic Arbitrariness, Entrepreneurial Unions, and Performances of Eligibility in Delhi

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia and the Department of Anthropology. 

About the event
The everyday politics of negotiations required to register oneself as a construction worker with labor boards remains critical to obtaining the eligible entitlements in Delhi. How is verification carried out and eligibility established? How are mistakes redressed in the workers’ identitycards? How are claims authenticated? The negotiations straddle the complex worlds of labor board office members, entrepreneurial unions (which demand a percentage of commission to support the workers in their pursuits), construction sector contractors and employers, and a variety of brokers and intermediaries. As the bureaucrats of labor boards arbitrarily pronounce their will to decide and the union representatives embrace an ethic of usefulness, the workers must systematically perform that they are genuine (asli) workers by deploying a wide variety of cultural and bodily tactics to prove their authenticity and claim their entitlements. In so doing, they arraign their speech-acts, comportments, physical attributes, and bodily signs as evidence for their claims as worker-citizens. 

About the speaker
Dr. Sanjeev Routray is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He completed his PhD in sociology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Routray is a sociologist-anthropologist, critical urbanist, and migration specialist of South Asia and beyond. His areas of expertise include urban poverty, political and legal mobilizations, transregional migration, and caste and labor market negotiations. He is the author of The Right to be Counted: The Urban Poor and The Politics of Resettlement in Delhi (2022, Stanford University Press) and his articles have appeared in leading journals including International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Studies, and City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, and Action. Dr. Routray has received fellowships from the Urban Studies Foundation (UK), The Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies (UK), Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Foundation (Germany), International Development Research Centre (Canada), and the Hari Sharma Foundation for his research and writing.