Hard and Invisible Bricks in the Wall: An Empirical Investigation on Gender, Caste, and Health Among Migrant Brick Workers in South India

Nanjunda, D. C. and Venugopal, P. N. (2022) Hard and Invisible Bricks in the Wall: An Empirical Investigation on Gender, Caste, and Health Among Migrant Brick Workers in South India. Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 71 (1). pp. 84-104. ISSN 2632-4369

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/2277436X211046125

Abstract

The current cross-sectional study is on the pathetic and excruciating conditions of employees in the brick industry conducted using a mixed-method approach in selected kilns from the four Districts of Karnataka State, South India. India is the country producing the highest number of bricks after China. Economic coercion is pushing the massive poor, especially the women labourers to engage in hard physical labour to survive. This study has explored that labourers in the brick industry are being exploited and excluded in voluminous ways. Caste plays a predominant role while hiring, wage fixation, and assigning the job at kilns. Women labour is being devalued in the name of the traditional and irrational social construction of gender. Sexual exploitations, low payment, restless work, harassment, absence of labour laws, are common here. It is found that rigid intergenerational occupational mobility into unorganised sectors among lower-caste people, as well as intra/intra-community social networks, among brick workers, are being called into question. We conclude that this is the time to think about the ‘National Register of Interstate Migrants’ and ‘National Mission to the Brick Industry’ in the context of the post-economic situation of COVID-19.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Bricks, women, labour, caste, migration, poverty, rural
Subjects: A Arts and Humanities > Sociology
Divisions: Department of > Centre for the study of Social Exclusion and Inculsive Policy
Depositing User: C Swapna Library Assistant
Date Deposited: 15 Jun 2023 07:20
Last Modified: 15 Jun 2023 07:20
URI: http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/id/eprint/17537

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