Resumo

PICHERIT, David. Debt-bondage in Rural South India. Desacatos [online]. 2014, n.44, pp.83-102. ISSN 2448-5144.

The article explores how migrant rural workers in South India negotiate and conceive indebtedness in the context of changing labor and power relations. Laborers' rejection of personalized attachment, their quest for dignity and the transformation of labor migration, combined with renovated patronage relationships in the context of structural poverty and precariousness lead to a constant search for multiple and temporary protection, work and credit. An ethnographical case study conducted among migrant laborers shows how the reformulations of protection forms for laborers and thus of power relations are crucial to understand the limits between indebtedness and overindebtedness.We argue that overindebtedness appears when the moral and physical obligation to reimburse a debt is combined with the absence of dependable protection and an eventual decline of status.

Palavras-chave : debt-bondage; labour; labour migration; India; development programs.

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