Articles by Ranabir Samaddar

The neo-liberal envisioning of cities and the accompanying hyper-commodification of land and new forms of social marginalisation have increased precarity among migrant labour, severely impairing their ability to negotiate the city space and society at large. This set of four studies, conducted in Mumbai and Kolkata, brings to the fore the relationship between labour and urban space, the fundamental problematic in the emergence of the neo-liberal city. Though playing a critical role in the neo-liberal restructuring of urban space, the migrants have been targeted by state agencies and sections of civil society, who find it difficult to accommodate them within the physical, social, political and cultural spaces of the city.

Europe achieved continental unifi cation through economic means, liberal constitutionalism and a currency union. It set goals of peace and security that encourage everyone to be liberal with unfettered freedom to access the market, and, on the other hand, allow the European Union to follow interventionist policies near abroad. The consequences of the union are to be found in Europe's restrictive and contradictory policies and programmes relating to immigration and refugee protection. The European migration crisis originates from this contradiction.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a period of globalisation when migration controls were put in place. As at present, then too, control of migrant labour was not the concern of governments alone. Employers, recruitment agents, labour brokers in sending and receiving countries, lawyers, courts, training institutes, moneylenders and other credit agencies, smugglers and a wide variety of intermediaries sought to gain from the transnational flow of workers. If the earlier period of globalisation marked by industrial capitalism called for massive supply of labour forming its underbelly, the present globalisation marked by unprecedented financialisation of capital and other resources calls for similar supply of labour forming the underbelly of the beast today.

Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History by Niraja Gopal Jayal; Permanent Black, 2013; pp 366, Rs 795.

Tools of Justice: Non-discrimination and the Indian Constitution by Kalpana Kannabiran (New Delhi: Routledge), 2012, pp xiv + 505, Rs 995.