Abstract

In the eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, young women migrate from within and outside the area to work in the expanding retail and service sector. This sector demands very little from them in terms of education, technical skills or financial literacy; the emphasis being on their youth, and supposed socio-cultural and gendered attributes of docility, flexibility and manageability. Simultaneously, technological and infrastructural advancements combined with the influx of cheap fakes of international brands have made borderlands prominent sites of low-end globalization. The informal sector thrives on the back of this rapidly expanding market, the unceasing supply of cheap, flexible and docile labor and the invisibility of laboring bodies and their inherent precarity. However, the informal sector and the attributes that it seeks also create room to maneuver, and negotiate precarity. Focusing on this newly formed but rapidly growing precariat in the eastern Himalayan borderland, and using qualitative data, this paper illustrates (a) how capitalism, through consumption, can create precarious lives and livelihoods (b) the emerging contradictions (empowerment, exploitation) in social and gendered relations as a result of informal employment and (c) the transformation of borderlands into new sites of low-end globalization.

摘要

在印度锡金和大吉岭的喜马拉雅东部地区，年轻女性从该地区内外迁移到不断扩大的零售和服务部门工作。该部门在教育、技术技能或金融知识方面对他们的要求很少；重点是他们的年轻，以及顺从、灵活性和可管理性的社会文化和性别属性。同时，技术和基础设施的进步，加上国际品牌廉价假货的涌入，使边境地区成为低端全球化的重要场所。非正规部门在这个迅速扩大的市场、廉价、灵活和温顺的劳动力的不断供应以及劳动者的隐蔽性及其固有的不稳定性的支持下蓬勃发展。然而，非正规部门及其所寻求的属性也创造了回旋余地，并就不稳定问题进行谈判。本文着眼于喜马拉雅东部边境这一新形成但迅速增长的不稳定地区，并使用定性数据，说明（a）资本主义如何通过消费创造不稳定的生活和生计（b）新兴的矛盾（赋权、剥削）非正规就业和(c) 边境地区转变为低端全球化的新地点所造成的社会和性别关系。