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Paper short abstract:

Drawing from political ecology and critical animal studies, this paper explores human-animal labour, justice and agency in precarious industrial workplaces. Focussing on India's brick kilns, it examines how humans and animals navigate life in sites of extreme poverty, oppression and marginalisation.

Paper long abstract:

There are thought to be over 100 million working equids globally, the vast majority of which are in the Global South. Today, working equids provide a critical labour service to industries all over the world, from tourism to tech, to landfill and mining – and yet, their contributions are consistently overlooked in policy and practice (Kubasiewicz et al., 2023). This paper focusses on the brick kiln industry, in which an estimated 20 million people are working in debt-bondage, producing 700-800 million bricks per year. India’s brick kilns represent sites of extreme poverty, oppression and marginalisation. Communities are often low status (caste) and transitory, bonded (by debt) to informal and unregulated kiln work (Watson et al., 2020; Narayanan, 2024). Drawing on recent investigations, this paper offers a view of brick kilns as spaces of ‘shared work’ and ‘shared suffering’ for humans and animals. It aims to expand the fields of political ecology, urban theory and critical animal studies, contributing to ideas of human-animal labour, justice and agency in precarious industrial workplaces.

Kubasiewicz et al. (2023) Bonded labour and donkey ownership in the brick kilns of India: Need for reform of policy and practice. Animal Welfare, 32:e8:1–11.

Narayanan, Y. (2024) Animal suffering in global development and antipoverty praxis: Enforced animal labor in the peripheral capitalism of Indian brick kilns. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 114(9):2068–2084.

Watson et al. (2020) Cultural ‘blind spots’, social influence and the welfare of working donkeys in brick kilns in Northern India. Frontiers in Veterinary Science.