Contradictions at work: Navigating relational autonomy and caste in Delhi, India

Ethnographic insights into people’s working lives can help us envision social policy to build dignified workspaces. This article explores the interlinkages between work and social protection, by drawing attention to two dimensions of pheriwale’s everyday working lives: first, how they relate to their work, and second, how they are situated within the Indian welfare context. Pheriwale are a group of traders in Delhi, India, who collect and sell secondhand/used-clothes. Like much of the Indian workforce, pheriwale’s work is classified as ‘informal’, since they remain outside social security tied to formal employment, they largely rely on irregular flow of income and primarily belong to the lower-caste groups. Low-income groups in India are entitled to various welfare schemes; however, accessing and receiving these welfare benefits may not always be consistent or dependable. In Delhi, pheriwale have been trading used/secondhand clothes for almost a century and they are one of the visibly women-dominated trading groups in the city. This article builds on four months of qualitative fieldwork at pheriwale’s marketplace in West Delhi, between 2017 and 2019. By following pheriwale’s work experiences through the conceptual lens of relational autonomy, this study highlights two key findings. First, due to the nature of self-employment, pheriwale shared how they have relative control of time and energy in their working routines. Second, in the face of an unreliable welfare state, pheriwale rely on building familial means of social protection to sustain lives.