Outcast Labour in Asia Circulation and Informalization of the Workforce at the Bottom of the Economy

Written over the last ten years, these essays focus on labour at the bottom of the rural economy, lacking social, economic, and political wherewithal, and their struggles to find a foothold in the urban economy. The author draws on his fieldwork from India, Indonesia, and China. The volume demonstrates that this extremely vulnerable group is largely excluded from a life of dignity, stability, and decent work and the recent policies of globalization have only worsened their prospects of escape from this wretched existence. This book is crucial to the debates about labour and development studies in the current climate of globalization. It raises and answers important questions pertaining to the dynamics of life and work at the lower rungs of society.

1. - . Labour and Landlessness in South and Southeast Asia;
2. - The Political Economy of Agrarian Change;
3. - Coming to Kolkata: Pathways to a Better Life or Lost in Dead-end Alleys?;
4. - How to Find Space, Shop Around, and Move Up in the Informal Sector;
5. - Slumlands;
6. - The Study of Industrial Labour in Post-colonial India: The Formal Sector;
7. - The Study of Industrial Labour in Post-colonial India: The Informal Sector, a Concluding Review;
9. - Labour Migration from Rural to Urban China;
10. - Social Exclusion in the Context of Globalization;
11. - Myths of the Global Safety Net;
12. - The Eventual Return of Social Darwinism; Index