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Accepted Paper:

Changing identities, risk and livelihood diversification: live-in domestic's in Delhi  
Linda Oecknick (Ambedkar University)

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines domestic service in Delhi exploring changing identities with regard to gendered labor markets, livelihood diversification, informal credit, social security and the breaking down of urban spatial segregation through physical proximity in live-in domestic service constellations.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is based on personal interviews with live-in domestic workers and their employers among the so called "gated communities" in neighborhoods of South Delhi such as Defence Colony or Jangpura in contrast to their live-out counterparts working in the same areas.

The paper will explore the livelihood patterns of live-in domestic's, discussing social network induced migration to the city, the regulating factors of the relationship to the employer with regard to family ideology, trust and physical proximity in the context of power, class difference, hierarchy and low status, while at the same time emphasizing the centrality of the formation of informal social security systems, livelihood diversification, access to capital, informal credit and land markets as strategies to counter risk within a situation of extreme socio/economic vulnerability. Additionally the integration of domestic's into gendered informal labor markets is analyzed with reference to the persistence of patriarchal values and the emergence of dual careers within urban middle class families, transforming the existing gendered division of labor into a "total institution" transcending traditional boundaries of public and private, love and paid labor, creating an urban maid/rural madam continuum along with urban based female heads of rural households in the city. The domestic live-in arrangement further disintegrates the within the concept of "world-classiness" desired and fostered socio/economic and political segregation of urban spaces through the creation of an intra household spatial simultaneity supporting the coexistence of communal and individual, traditional and "modern" life styles, changing identities and aspirations among the domestic's in Delhi.

Panel P11
Changing spaces, identities and livelihoods in Delhi
  Session 1