In the Shadow of the Male Archetype

Abstract

This article interrogates how migration governance in India is shaped by the archetype of the male migrant, producing systematic invisibility of women’s labor and mobility. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Jharkhand between 2022 and 2023, it examines how dominant data regimes and policy frameworks—anchored in assumptions of long-term, wage-based, and individually motivated migration—fail to capture women’s short-term, circular, and household-linked forms of mobility. As a result, women’s work in sectors such as agriculture, brick kilns, construction, garments, and domestic work remains undercounted and excluded from welfare entitlements and labor protections. This invisibilization is structurally embedded within contemporary labor markets and governance systems, where women’s labor is rendered flexible, informal, and disposable, while the costs of social reproduction are externalized onto households and communities. The article further argues that state frameworks do not merely fail to correct these exclusions but actively mirror and reinforce the logic of capital, enabling labor regimes that exploit women’s insecurity, mobility constraints, and social positioning. By situating these dynamics within debates on the feminization of precarity, the article demonstrates how gendered and encasted economies of vulnerability and exhaustion are (re)produced through contingent market incorporation and simultaneous “organized abandonment” by the state. The findings underscore the need to rethink migration data, labor classifications and welfare design through an intersectional lens that accounts for the structural linkages between caste, gender, and informal labor relations. Future research should further examine how alternative data frameworks and policy designs can more accurately capture and support women’s diverse laboring trajectories.