Ms Ms Debolina Majumder

I am a labour and urban geographer who has recently passed my PhD viva in Geography at the University of Cambridge. My research maps the changing dynamics in rural-urban livelihoods, unpaid labour, the future of informal(ised) work, and everyday life in cities of the global south. Using a multi-sited, mixed methods approach combining oral history interviews, archival research and key informant interviews with housing and labour organisers, my doctoral research explores the everyday lives, politics, and place-making strategies of informal infrastructural workers in Delhi over the course of the long-twentieth century to the present day. My thesis argues that labour informalization, as a strategy of both colonial and post-colonial capital accumulation has been a fundamental and yet understudied force behind the production of the contemporary urban landscape and the privatization of everyday life in globalizing Delhi. In applying critical political economic research on labour to theories of urbanism and the production of the urban landscape, my research contributes to the literature on essential work, migrant mobilities, feminist economic geography, and urban inequality in the Global South, as well as the generation of just and inclusive urban development strategies and policies.