Economic Sociology of Seasonal Labour Migrants: A Case of Maharashtra State, India
Kolloquium mit Prof. Prashant Bansode (GIPE Pune)
Mittwoch, 25.06.202510 – 12 c.t.
OEC 1.163
ABSTRACT
The sugarcane cutters workers are employed each year for about six months in a year from the backward regions of Maharashtra at the sugar factories. A unique kind of labour recruiting phenomenon exists in this informal labour market. Approximately 12 million workers leave their villages and work at the sugar factory sites for cutting and transporting the sugarcane. Such an enormous kind of mobilization of workers is happening perfectly and efficiently since colonial times. There is more prevalence of nomadic and tribal communities in this labour market. In the post-independence era, the sugar industry in Maharashtra is developed on the lines of co-operatives—for which Jan Breman calls—cooperative capitalism. The workers are hired via the agents—called as mukadams—in the backward regions. The recruitment is done by giving advance which is called as—uchal and contract is signed between factory—agent—worker. The workers remain bonded as they are not able to settle the advance. New forms of bondage develop in this context.
Economists have focused mainly on the efficiency of labour markets while sociologists have worried if they are fair. Economists have given a formal logic of efficiency and performance of labour while sociologists have dwelled on power, family and class, ethnic origin and like are relevant for distribution of the labour. Economic sociologists have departed from the economist’s belief of labour markets as sociological research on labour focusses on operation of large chain, networks of particularist and personal social relations or ‘weak ties’. This lies at the bottom of labour market transaction and structures rational strategic behaviour. The sociologists working on labour markets reveals that social networks do not only give us why people get jobs but why some groups are underrepresented or overrepresented in certain occupations. Granovetter points out that sociologists begin well to explain the labour markets with informal networks but also markets spring from networks and the corporate actors that enforce them. This paper explains the seasonal labour market of sugarcane cutters using Granovetter’s perspective.