The Making of Urban Peripheries and Peripheral Labor: Brick Kilns and Circular Migration in and beyond Greater Delhi

Abstract

The paper proposes a reading of the urban periphery from a labor-centered perspective, according to which its relational geography is indexed to the mobility of marginalized migrant workers and labor processes. Specifically, it attempts to rethink the urban periphery from the vantage point of peri-urban brick kilns and brick kiln workers. The paper draws parallels between the displacement of brick kilns to the peri-urban and the precarious migration of brick kiln workers by highlighting the tenuous tie between brick kiln workers and the urban space embedded in both. The paper first outlines the historical process of the outward displacement of brick kilns from Delhi to peri-urban villages in Haryana as a result of various pieces of legislation, judicial rulings and planning discourses. It then turns to contemporary forms of circulation between the kilns and the core city. Drawing from fieldwork data generated out of kiln workers’ life histories, it explores the various factors conditioning mobility and the reasons why workers circulate between the brick kilns and different urban occupations at different moments in their lives. The paper argues that exclusionary urbanization processes, in tandem with migrants’ life cycle choices, produce migrant workers as peripheral subjects while they contribute to the production of the urban periphery.