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

无论如何，印度劳动力之间的分歧是很深的，但它们是如何在历史上出现的呢？通过研究这个问题，该项目对一种根深蒂固的正统观念提出了质疑，这种正统观念为当代全球关于“非正式性”和“非正式性”的辩论提供了信息：印度当代劳动力市场被彻底分成了二元静态结构：(现代的、微不足道的)正式劳动力市场和(传统的、巨大的)非正式“部门”。通过对正规化和信息化这两个相互关联的过程的历史重建，将检验两个假设：一、劳动法和其他监管结构往往创建于二十世纪中叶，有助于在依赖工资的劳动力内部出现在工作关系、社会保障、流动性、地位和收入方面的尖锐、多重且仅相对稳定的分工；这些监管结构对社会关系没有无中介和统一的影响，而是由相互竞争的社会行为者不同地表达出来，导致进一步的分化。因此，这项研究在两个层面上进行：(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一个相互冲突的过程中适用于各种不同的社会环境。在第一个层面上，该项目考察了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，法律复杂性对劳动力内部造成多重分工的影响--特别是中央政府和州政府颁布的一系列相互冲突的劳动法；第二，工资监管对差异过程的影响。在第二个层面，一个地区性案例研究和一个横断面研究调查了在印度各地区和行业条件迥异的情况下，这一监管方案是如何以多种形式表述的。案例研究的重点是德里地区，该地区获得工业意义的时间相对较晚，并且正规化和信息化的过程同时发生。它恢复了这段历史在非农业工人社区中被记忆的方式。这项横断面研究仅限于一个方面，即后殖民时期早期印度的劳资关系日益法律化，以及随之而来的工会中“非正式”雇用工人的边缘化，同时比较了这一进程根据地区和政治条件的不同表述。该项目将涉及几个合作伙伴，以整合其他区域观点，并保存其收藏，以供今后在印度劳动法数字储存库中进行研究。

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.