Divisions of Labour. Histories of formalisation and informalisation in the transition to postcolonial India

印度劳动力之间的分歧无论如何都是深刻的，但它们是如何在历史上出现的呢？通过研究这个问题，该项目质疑一个根深蒂固的正统观念，告知当代全球辩论的“非正规性”和“不稳定性”：印度的当代劳动力市场是干净的二元和静态结构分裂的概念：一个（现代和微小）正式和（传统和巨大）非正式的“部门”。通过对正式化与非正式化过程的历史重构，本文将检验两个假设：一、正式化与非正式化的关系。劳工法和其他监管结构往往是在二十世纪中期制定的，它们在工作关系、社会保障、流动性、地位和收入等方面促成了依赖工资的劳动力内部出现尖锐、多重和相对稳定的分化;二.这些监管结构对社会关系没有直接和统一的影响，而是由相互竞争的社会行为者以不同的方式加以阐述，导致进一步的分化。因此，在两个层面上进行研究：（a）在监管层面，以确定制约劳动力市场分割的主要结构;（B）在衔接层面，以掌握这些监管结构如何在冲突过程中适用于多样化的社会环境。在第一个层面上，该项目研究了20世纪40年代和50年代出现的监管情景的两个关键方面：第一，法律的复杂性对劳动力内部多个部门的创建的影响，特别是中央和州政府制定的各种相互冲突的劳动法;第二，工资监管对差异化过程的影响。在第二个层面，一个区域案例研究和一个横截面研究调查如何在印度地区和行业的巨大差异条件下，这种监管方案是以多种形式表达的。案例研究的重点是德里地区，获得工业的重要性相对较晚，正规化和非正规化的过程同时发生。它恢复了这段历史是如何在非农业工人的社区被记住的。横截面的研究局限于一个方面，即在早期后殖民印度的劳资关系日益司法化，并伴随着边缘化的“非正式”就业工人在工会，同时比较这一进程的差异表达根据区域和政治条件。该项目将涉及几个合作伙伴，以整合其他区域观点，并在印度劳动法数字库中保存其收藏，供今后研究。

The divisions among India's labour force are deep by any comparison, but how did they emerge historically? By examining this question, the project interrogates an entrenched orthodoxy that informs contemporary global debates on ‘informality’ and ‘precarity’: the notion that India's contemporary labour market is cleanly split into a binary and static structure: a (modern and miniscule) formal and a (traditional and titanic) informal 'sector'. Through a historical reconstruction of the connected processes of formalization and informalization, two hypotheses will be tested: i. that labour laws and other regulatory structures, often created in the middle decades of the twentieth century, were instrumental for the emergence of sharp, multiple and only relatively stable divisions within the wage-dependent workforce in terms of work relations, social security, mobility, status and income; ii. that these regulatory structures had no unmediated and uniform impact on social relations but were articulated divergently by contending social actors resulting in further differentiation. The research is thus conducted at two levels: (a) at the level of regulation in order to identify major structures conditioning labour market segmentation and (b) at the level of articulation in order to grasp how these regulatory structures were applied in a conflictual process to variegated social settings. At the first level, the project examines two key aspects of the regulatory scenario that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s: first, the impact of legal complexity on the creation of multiple divisions within the workforce—specifically of the wide array of conflicting labour laws enacted by the central and state governments; second, the effects the regulation of wages had for differentiation processes. At the second level, one regional case study and one cross-sectional study investigate how this regulatory scenario was articulated in a plurality of forms under the vastly differing conditions of Indian regions and industries. The case study focuses on the Delhi region that acquired industrial significance comparatively late and where processes of formalization and informalization occurred simultaneously. It recovers how this history is remembered in the neighbourhoods of non-agricultural workers. The cross-sectional study confines itself to a single aspect, namely the increasing juridification of industrial relations in early postcolonial India and the concomitant marginalization of ‘informally’ employed workers in trade unions, while comparing the differential articulation of this process according to regional and political conditions. The project will involve several cooperation partners to integrate other regional perspectives and preserve its collections for future research in a Digital Repository of Indian Labour Law.