An Economy of Lies: Informal Income, Phone-Banking and Female Migrant Workers in Kolkata, India
Associate Professor Atreyee Sen contributed to the journal Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, published by Taylor & Francis Online with the article: 'An Economy of Lies: Informal Income, Phone-Banking and Female Migrant Workers in Kolkata, India'.
This article analyzes rural-urban migrant workers’ multiple journeys of financial secrecies, gendered solidarities and covert income-management through the use of smartphones and net-banking in the city.
Using the narratives of informal domestic workers in Kolkata, a city in eastern India, the author show how migrant women managed a shadow network of personal savings, free of surveillance from their rural kin, that was creatively positioned at the interface of modern digital technologies and traditional social relations.
The author develop the concept of ‘migra-monies’ to underline how such hidden cash flows within migration landscapes emboldened female workers to envision non-normative gendered subjectivities and economically secure fiscal futures.
Citation
(2022) An Economy of Lies: Informal Income, Phone-Banking and Female Migrant Workers in Kolkata, India, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 20:2, 164-176, DOI: 10.1080/15562948.2021.1978123