Migrant Labor Supply Chains: Architectures of Mobile Assemblages
| Author | Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639221080519 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Migrant Labor Supply
Chains: Architectures of
Mobile Assemblages
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Abstract
This paper explores the potential for Assemblage Theory to supplement current
approaches to studying labor migration in law and the social sciences. Based upon a
study of women’s migration for garment and domestic work in India, I lay out the
labor supply chain assemblage (LSCA) as a framework for understanding how workers
find employment across multi-site, dynamic trajectories. Migration into temporary
employment requires workers to move between jobs on an ongoing basis.
Accordingly, studying labor supply chains as fluid assemblages defined by labor market
conditions, component elements, and various agents provides a methodology for analyz-
ing frequent job searches, across recruitment geographies, that include a range of
recruitment actors. By accommodating temporal, territorial, and relational analysis,
this approach provides insight into how labor migration processes for migrant garment
and domestic workers in India articulate with the development of markets, working con-
ditions, and social hierarchies –including on the basis of gender and caste.
Keywords
labor migration, recruitment, garment work, domestic work, gender, caste, contingent
work
Introduction
Across the globe, migrant workers are increasingly concentrated in temporary employment –
including contract, short-term, and contingent work. Thisriseintemporaryworkamong
Corresponding author:
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, Jurisprudence and Social Policy,University of California, Berkeley, 1787 Madison
Avenue, Apartment 603, New York, New York 10035, USA.
Email: shikhasb@berkeley.edu
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2022, Vol. 31(6) 807–828
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/09646639221080519
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migrants and other workers has received significant scholarly attention (Beard and
Edwards, 1995; Kalleberg, 2000; Valenzuela, 2003), with taxonomies of temporary
work, classified by duration, location, and number and types of employers (Feldman,
2006). Relatedly, research on informal labor markets highlights the significance of
hiring practices in developing markets and determining labor conditions (Portes, 1995;
Valenzuela, 2003). Lines of foregoing research on temporary employment and hiring
practices raise but do not answer myriad questions. How do migrant workers move
between temporary jobs? How can we identify multi-site, dynamic labor migration pro-
cesses? How are networked recruitment practices governed, including in the absence of
state regulation? To address these questions, this study develops an approach to studying
labor supply chains as assemblages (Deleuze and Parnet, 1987; Nail 2017), an empiric-
ally grounded methodology for understanding complex labor migration processes that
cross, link, and co-exist within geographies and markets. This framework fills a gap in
the literature on labor migration by revealing interrelated sites and modes of governance
that shape employment outcomes for migrant workers.
My analysis of labor supply chain assemblages (LSCAs) is rooted in empirical inves-
tigation of how migrant women workers from Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand, India
move between temporary jobs in garment and domestic work in Delhi and Mumbai. It is
based on 254 interviews and 63 focus group discussions with migrant women and recruit-
ment intermediaries across five states. By focusing on the experiences of migrant women
from Scheduled Castes and Tribes, I direct attention to how gender and social identity
structure labor supply chains. My focus on India provides insight into labor supply
chains in a context shaped by high levels of internal migration into temporary employ-
ment; and this comparative study of placement in garment and domestic work develops
the relevance of LSCAs for studying deregulated industrial and unregulated contexts.
I found that in this highly informal context, employment insecurity is managed by elab-
orate networks of recruitment intermediaries between geographies, markets, and roles.
I inductively identified labor supply chains as mobile and fluid sets of material and rela-
tional practices that can be well studied through the lens of assemblage theory.
Although they are always evolving, the defining features of assemblages include their
conditions, elements, and agents (Deleuze and Guattari, 2008; Nail 2017). I identify three
defining features of LSCAs into temporary work. The first, frequency, is a condition that
refers to repeated engagement with a labor supply chain assemblage. The second, iter-
ation, directs attention to repetition with variation between successive labor supply
chain engagements between workers locations, recruitment intermediaries, and employ-
ers. The third, segmentation, describes discrete but linked elements of LSCAs, including
processes that support migration across geographies, mobility within markets, and pro-
motion. Frequency is a temporal condition, whereas iteration and segmentation are rela-
tional and territorial conditions. As such, studying labor supply chains as assemblages
facilitates analysis that is at once temporal, territorial, and relational.
Frequency, segmentation, and iteration, in turn, direct attention to various sites of recruit-
ment governance. These include structures of work within industries and sectors, labor supply
and demand, migration trajectories, social relationships, and systems of seniority and access –
including those maintained by gender, class, caste, race, nationality, and other systems of
hierarchical differentiation. By bringing labor market, territorial, and social governance
808 Social & Legal Studies 31(6)
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