‘AESTHETIC LABOUR’ IN THE EMERGING LABOUR MARKET: A CASE STUDY ON FEMALE LABOUR MIGRANTS FROM NORTH EASTERN INDIA TO THE METROPOLITAN CITIES OF CHENNAI AND BANGALORE, INDIA

Binitha V Thampi and Banti Deori, Indian Institute ofTechnology Madras, Chennai, India

Introduction – Gender and Migration

Gender got incorporated as an analytical category in migration studies since 1970s.

An exploration of the ways in which gender configures and reconfigures migratory moves of men and women has been made.

Observed feminisation of migration (51% and 46% of total migrants in developed and developing countries respectively are women) due to feminisation of poverty.

The induction of women into the low paid sectors of the economy has resulted in new forms of labour market segmentation with gendering of the global economy.

several surveys underestimate female migration due to their transient circulation; many female migrants became invisible and undocumented.

Gender norms and relations of both sending and receiving societies determine to a greater extent the volume of migration and its inter-relationships with the caste, religion, class, ethnicity, marital status and age composition of the migrants.

gender inequalities most often combine with those of race/ethnicity, and of being a non-national, make many women ‘triply disadvantaged’ and most likely to be over represented in marginal, unregulated and poorly paid sectors of the labour market.

simultaneous experience of upward(due to remittances) and downward(due to triple disadvantage) social mobility in migration

Remittances do have gender differentiated impact. Migration policies often discriminate women as they

often are unskilled and undocumented that curtail them in accessing a bundle of rights and entitlements.

Often, the experience of internal migration could be more disabling and invisible in terms of citizenship rights as against cross-border migration. It is important therefore to re-evaluate our notions of assumed citizenship rights within nations and to formulate legal frameworks.

The Indian Context and Study Focus

Services sector of India had an impressive growth in the past two decade with diversification of services.

Migration of women from Northeast to the urban cities for services sector employment since 1990s.

Northeast region of India – cultural, economic and political distinctiveness

Tribal communities; gender norms and practices more egalitarian; English education; more westernized. Low private investment and economic development; political unrest and insurgency politics.

Direction of Migratory movement

Destination context

Chennai and Bangalore are the metropolitan capital cities of two southern neighbouring states viz. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (see the Map). These two cities are contrasting in its cultural profile in terms of Chennai with its perceived conservatism (closed, inward looking, less welcoming inter-state migrants) as against perceived openness of Bangalore (more cosmopolitan, open to inter-state migrants). This difference is due to historical reasons

Research questions

We examine the process of migration of single women from Northeastern India to the Southern cities, and explore the nature of embodiment and the aestheticisation of labour that takes place in the new services sector in India wherein these women appears to have a comparative competitive edge over local women. The question that we raise is whether this aestheticisation is advantageous to labour, where there exists an entry barrier to local women.

Through our efforts to map the life worlds of these women in two select Metropolitan cities viz. Chennai and Bangalore, we attempt to explore the relationship between places and spaces in the migration process.

Do different places shape and provide distinct spaces for migrant women that have significant impact on their everyday lives and effect their citizenship rights?

Methodology, Data Collection

Four analytical categories this paper engage with are gender, labour, race and space . How do they interact and produce set of enabling and disabling conditions for a group of women in the increasingly globalized cities of India is the question we attempt to address.

We hypothesize that the cultural distinctiveness of these places – the two destination cities - do play a significant role in shaping up spaces of everyday life that constitute the habitus of migrant women in these locations. A framework that accommodates this line of enquiry is that of feminist labour geography. It integrates gender and spatiality within the everyday performance of labour – both at the personal and social scales.

We employed a mixed method of administering semi-structured questionnaire along with conducting in-depth interviews

We have identified existing associations of migrant workers (formed based on ethnicities) in these two cities and selected a sample of 150 women.

Basic Profile

There exists a contrast in terms of education of migrant women in the two select locations. 53 percent in Chennai are 10th class pass (completed high school) and 35 percent completed 12th class (higher secondary) and the remaining have completed 8th class (middle school). As against this, in Bangalore, 30 percent of them have under graduation and 41 percent completed 12th class. It appears that there exists a clear difference in educational attainment, indicating those who are more educated prefer Bangalore as their destination

The difference in educational attainment corroborates with the age profile of female migrants in the two select locations. 81 percent of the respondents are below the age of 25 years in Chennai, whereas, in Bangalore it is 61 percent. In the age group of 25-30 years, the share of respondents in Bangalore is more than double compared to Chennai.

In Chennai, around half of the women are working in Beauty and Personal Care services where as in Bangalore, they constitute only a quarter. Most of the less educated women work in this service. A quarter of them in Bangalore work in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) services whereas none in Chennai that indicates the educated girls are opting Bangalore to work in the BPO services.

Data shows that around half of the migrant women are earning above Rs. 20000 in Bangalore where as in Chennai only 20 percent could earn this salary. This is reflective of their educational background and the diversity of the services sector in Bangalore.

Aesthetic Labour

What is aesthetic labour in the services sector? Continuity is the key defining characteristc, shift that we

see is in the nature and location of work due to commodification

Many of these services involve working on the body such as in healthcare, gyms, massage parlours and hair salons. And this working on the body is not just unidirectional from providers to consumers; this also demands the service providers to work on their bodies in self-improvement programmes to produce an idealized version of a slender, toned, deodorized, youthful-looking (and white) body – the type of body that is most highly valued in such new consumer-based services.

In our field study, it was found that fair skin with pan-Asian looks and the ‘right attitude’ constitute the embodied labour. Former is a physical attribute where as the latter is acquired.

What is ‘right attitude’ How do they acquire it? Soft speech, patience, politeness, ability and

willingness to interact with opposite sex without inhibitions etc. constitute right attitude. They acquire it from the cultural context of Northeastern region. Gender norms and practices are more egalitarian in Northeast India as against rest of India.

Do these factors that make their entry easy continue to help them in and out of their spaces of work? The personal interviews with Northeastern migrant women testify that they experience different forms of discrimination both in their workspace and outside. The commonly used terms to refer Northeastern workers are ‘Manipuri’ and ‘Chinky’ Manipuri - the name of the state that becomes the worker identity; chinky – slang refers to person of East Asian descent.

The conditions of work are found to be far more disadvantageous to Northeastern women workers in terms of lesser break time during work, frequent overtime work after the regular time without additional pay, sexual harassments and exploitation. On the one hand, the cultural baggage they carry provides them easy entry into work, on the other hand, it discriminates and place them in worst conditions within the workspace and subject them to discriminatory practices outside of it.

Two categories of Aesthetic labour in the study context

Beauty and Personal Care - primary sensory faculty involved is bodily touch and care is communicated through this. It is a body-to-body exchange that takes place in silence.

Politics of silence - often it is advertised that they provide authentic Thai massage by trained Thai women, to keep that exotic image, these women should keep silence. These services can also be provided at customer's residence. To prevent such arrangements, conversation between the customer and service provider is forbidden.

Hospitality, Retail and BPO Services: What distinguishes these services from the Beauty and Personal Care services is the use of speech and language. The voice and speech transmit the care.

Networks and spaces of social reproduction

Formal associations based on ethnicities are supported and facilitated by churches both local and Northeastern. They help workers in varied ways.

Extended use of religious spaces in Chennai (Chennai more conservative, no social spaces for Northeastern men and women to congregate and spend time; use extended religiosity – collectively cook and dine, make small contribution to the church and sing prayer songs to gain acceptance and legitimacy (subversion of spaces)

Those who are in Beauty and Personal care are excluded from both these spaces.

Rights, Entitlements and Citizenship

Difficulty in housing; various forms of exploitation No proper identification documents including ‘ration

cads’ (public distribution system to provide subsidised essential food and non-food items)

Non-portability of entitlements is an issue Consumer citizenship to claim a space in the city –

Many of the services sector employment have dress codes, insist employees to wear regular cosmetic make up etc. Remittances are low in Bangalore despite income is relatively high.

Conclusion

The gender as constructed and practiced within northeastern region functions as an enabling factor that makes the easy entry of Northeastern women into work. Nevertheless, such gender norms and practices discriminate and subject them to various sexual exploitations. This is demonstrative of the performativity of gender in different cultural spaces.

The northeasterners belong to different ethnic communities, and are scheduled tribes. The tribes in the mainland India are by and large are living within forests and secluded locations are hyper marginalized. Northeastern tribes do not experience similar marginalization, as the markers of the mainland tribes are their dark skin colour and less modern life styles. The experience of marginalization Northeastern female migrants face is different in terms of the ‘othering’ process based on ethnic and racial differences. How does this racial/ethnic discrimination gets articulated and practiced in the Indian context is an important question that needs to be further looked into.

The emergent consumer citizenship that we observed is a feature of neo-liberal development across Global South. We found that the modern services sector embodied labour as a site for ‘working on the body’ of the labourers that in turn qualifies them to become consumer citizens. The paper points towards what we may call as ‘cultural economy’ of different locations that enable the performance of such citizenship.

Finally, the paper demonstrates how places shape spaces in and out of work, and how does it uses gender and ethnicity in such production. As feminist geographers would argue, such production is not taking place in vacuum, it interacts and shapes labour market opportunities that would be enabling or disabling for different sections of women workers.