While circling back to the city: patterns of demarcations through Bengali labour migrant’s lived experiences in Kerala

Abstract

The circular and seasonal labour migration of Bengali migrants to find work in the informal economic sectors in Kerala has been most researched as well as an ongoing endeavour since the past decade. So has been the Gulf-based international labour migration from semi-urban-rural pockets in Kerala. With such vast entanglements in both these domestic and international labour market economies, the experiences of exploitation, exclusion and social mobility patterns are also paradoxically observed in South Asia. Through this paper, I aim to explore specific urban spaces and settlements in the city of Kochi in Kerala that are vastly resided by the Bengali labour migrants. In doing so, I discuss the meaning of homemaking for the Bengali migrants in a Malayali speaking urban space where they keep coming back for work, with families, inhabit and leave only to circle back after a few months. While the city offers educational mobilities, along with economic opportunities, yet their constricted relation with their labour contractors and politicised perception of the majority Malayali speaking population about the Bengalis remain while the migrants set up shops in the city markets along with their peers. With this paper, I hope to unpack this pattern of rural to urban labour migration corridor from West Bengal to Kerala through narrating lived experiences of demarcations as well as memories (of inhabiting) Kochi as retold by Bengali labour migrants.