Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the labor cultures of Bhopal's precarious metal workers and try to explain in which regards these cultures are influenced by precariousness, whether it be in its most general and universalistic meaning or in the specific forms it takes in the Indian context.

Paper long abstract:

With around 98% of its population in the informal sector, India's labour regime can be said to be, in many ways, a regime of precariousness. Though the deindustrialization process is only a factor explaining this dominance of the precarious labour regime in India, the fact that it is backed up by the State shows its willpower to give up the idea of formalizing the labour market. By taking the example of two populations of metal workers, some from the Bhopal's polluted slums working in the old town's workshop and some rural migrants working in diverse sites of flyover construction yards around Bhopal, this presentation will try to explore which labor cultures the workers develop in this state of precariousness. It will present their daily struggle against precariousness but also the value system which shape their representations of labour, whether it be the way they see their condition of daily labourers or the way they valorize the specific activity they're engaged in. The main exercise of this presentation will be then to sort, inside these labor cultures, which elements seem general to the precarious workers' situation around the world, which ones are specific to India, its form of labour and its culture and which one are specific to each population. The goal would be to open discussion about how it would be possible to do a comparative anthropology to the labourer's confrontation to precariousness and the way they manage to defend the social value of their work in the lack of formal protections and unions.