Social geographies of a city: a study of the working lives of migrant live-out part-time women domestic workers in Delhi

In the landscape of migration in India, there's a notable surge in women engaging in circular migration, including in roles like domestic work. Amongst these, part-time live-outs domestic workers stand out as the most rapidly growing group. This research project proposes to look at how women navigate work and the city in this context of changes in domestic work patterns, by asking: In what ways do the multifaceted identities of migrant live-out part-time women domestic workers in Delhi shape everyday navigations of work and the city?

Existing sociological scholarship on domestic work has typically focused on either international migration patterns or the specific aspects of work dynamics within households. On the other hand, scholars of urban sociology have not sufficiently engaged with the implications of urban inequalities for labour politics, which remain central, especially when the issue of labour informality remains closely tied to urban informality in general in India.

While scholars have explored how the city acts as an extended worksite for many domestic workers in other contexts (see Chan and Latham, 2022), there is a dearth of studies that explores this topic in India (Sharma, 2023). Hence, in my ambition to investigate the working lives of women domestic workers in Delhi, I aim to bridge two distinct, rich bodies of literature seldom studied together: sociology of domestic work and urban sociology.

My research has wider relevance. Indeed, in contrast to the predominant emphasis on international patterns of migration for domestic work, my research addresses the understudied dimension of female internal migration within India, specifically to Delhi. In addition, this thesis focuses on the commuting experiences of domestic workers in Delhi, a perspective often overlooked in the broader context of domestic work studies in India (Wilks, 2022).

Overall, my research has important implications for designing interventions that enhance the resilience of poor migrant women workers in India. I will conduct mobile and multi-sited ethnography, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with domestic workers across three selected areas of Delhi. I will also interview experts and officials operating in this field, as well as trade unionists, to triangulate my findings.

I will draw on my extensive network in Delhi to access the latter constituencies and use 'snowballing' techniques to recruit more participants.

Carolina will be doing at least six months of fieldwork in India. She has been learning Hindi whilst living in New Delhi for over a year, but she will need to take an intensive language course (offered by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) in the first few months of the DPhil to prepare for fieldwork. We confirm that these plans are well considered and appropriate for the research.