Extreme Jobs and the Household: Work and Care in the New India

Abstract

Asia’s status as the centre of economic growth and driver of the global economy is fundamentally reframing international economic dynamics as well as the structure and institutions of individual economies. Established patterns of global production and exchange have been transformed as the low-cost Chinese economy has delivered heightened competition primarily in the manufacturing sector, but increasingly in services. One of the most significant changes to emerge has been the development of new flexible production processes in which work is highly fragmented — both geographically and temporally (Standing 1999; Dicken 2011). This has given rise to what Guy Standing calls ‘the precariat’: a new class of workers for whom flexibility and insecurity are the new norm and social security and decent conditions of employment severely depleted (Standing 2011).