"As long as the family system prevails": gender, the family and law in indentured labour recruitment in India, 1800-1930

我通过性别视角和家庭视角来分析印度契约劳工的项目。通过理解雇佣契约劳工的过程从根本上是性别化的，我分析了劳动家庭作为殖民定居项目和经济榨取手段的法律建构。契约劳工使印第安人和他们被派往的殖民地居民与国家签订了越来越多的合同，并控制了国家。这种接触不仅通过直接控制，而且通过创造和操纵社会因素来调解。我质疑为什么契约的逻辑和家庭的逻辑会如此不同。我希望能揭开这个契约家族的真面目以及人们对他们的想象。除此之外，我还将分析在家庭的幌子下，性别劳动制度是如何建立起来的。这里的关键问题是殖民时期对女性气质和男性气质的理解是如何影响这一点的，以及经济因素在其中扮演了什么角色。对我的理解至关重要的是Samita Sen关于印度殖民时期婚姻对劳动力监管的效用的研究。最后，我考察了契约家庭的空间性及其影响，特别是对土著的影响。什么时候与契约相关的不同群体被解读为“归属”什么时候被解读为“陌生人”这一切是如何写入法律并通过法律得以延续的？在这个项目中，我使用了多种方法，包括跨国历史、酷儿理论、空间性和性别作为权力项目。

I analyse the project of Indian indentured labour through a gendered lens and through the prism of the family. By understanding the processes of recruitment for indentured labour as fundamentally gendered, I analyse the legal construction of the labouring family as both a colonial settlement project and as a means of economic extraction. Indentured labour brought both Indian people and the people who inhabited the colonies they were sent to into increasing contract with and control of the state. This contact was mediated not just through direct control but also by creating and manipulating societal factors. I question why the logics of indenture and the logics of family have been held so distinct. I hope to uncover both who the indentured family was and what it was imagined they could be. Alongside this, I will analyse the ways in which a gendered labour system was constructed under the guise of the family. Key questions for this are how colonial understandings of femininity and masculinity affected this and what role did economic factors play. Crucial to my understanding of this is Samita Sen's work on the utility of marriage for the regulation of labour in colonial India. Finally, I look at the spatiality of the indentured family and it's impacts, particularly with regards to indigeneity. When were different groups associated with indenture read as 'belonging' and when were they read as 'strangers'? How was all of this written into and perpetuated through the law? For this project I utilise multiple methodologies, including transnational history, queer theory, spatiality and gender as a project of power.