On the social politics of living: Analyzing issues in Migrant Labor, Life and Livelihood in the (original) (raw)
The issue of migrant labor is not new to the socioeconomic nomenclature of the character of employment in India. Especially, in the unprecedented circumstances created due to the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, the issue has only achieved a heightened degree of prominence amidst the various kinds of deliberations being made with regards to policy making and employment opportunities. However, the pertinent issue of migrant labor in India is that it does not have a homogenous disposition, in the sense that even those who are engaged in gainful employment that has no as such precarious connotations also qualify as migrant laborers as are the ones whose livelihoods are always a matter of chances and possibilities. In light of such an orientation it is therefore necessary to deal with the inherent heterogeneity in a completely different manner, so as to bring about the overall problematic aspects related to the issue of migrant labor and its various ancillaries. Hence, with regards to the discussion that shall unfold through in this particular essay, the central argument shall rest upon the transformation of the socio-political dimensions of employment due to the prevailing extenuating circumstances. In conceiving such fundamentals, this paper aims at looking at three important things, namely, the phased evolution of a new category of class differentiation, the dynamics of novelty involved in the pandemic being a social stratification device and the resulting structurization of injustice stemming from the various arresting correspondences of the pandemic as far as migrant labor is concerned. Indubitably, the argument that we seek to make in this discussion is not how the pandemic enforces various causalities which negatively affect the livelihood of migrant labor, but how the latter itself as a definite social category is structurally and institutionally bound to certain intricacies from within its composition, that the exigencies arising from the pandemic only mould them into causing inconveniences for the migrant labor population as a whole.
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