Migrant and the Neo-liberal City

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.