An Economy of Lies: Informal Income, Phone-Banking and Female Migrant Workers in Kolkata, India

Abstract

This article will analyze 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, I 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. I 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.

Keywords:

• Gender
• digital saving
• migration
• urban slums
• informal labor

Disclosure statement

There is no competing interest.

Notes

1 This research has been funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (FKK). I want to thank Brenda Yeoh and Shiori Shakuto (the editors of the special issue), the internal reviewers of the article, and the journal peer reviewers for their thoughtful comments.

I would also like to thank the Centre for Global Criminology for their support during the course of this research.

2 https://www.cgdev.org/publication/building-digital-id-inclusive-services-lessons-india

3 http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/655801461250682317/WDR16-BP-Aadhaar-Paper-Banerjee.pdf

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7636/1/MPRA_paper_7636.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond.