Volume-XI, Issue-IV, July 2025 |
Labourer on the Move: The Aspiration Trap, Structural Inequality, and the Crisis of Capability under Capitalist Accumulation Rana Mitra, Research Scholar, Department of Political Science, Raiganj University, Raniganj, West Bengal, India |
Received: 20.06.2025 | Accepted: 09.07.2025 | Published Online: 31.07.2025 | Page No: | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.11.issue.04W.109 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
The movement of capital beyond the national boundaries has created new conditions for labour mobility. Economic activities and technological progressions have simplified the development of a transnational space for capital flow. The changes brought about by international trade were expected to be managed through the internal movement of labour and capital across different social classes and occupations. Internal migration, which involves movement within a country's borders, significantly surpasses international migration in terms of the number of people affected. Migration studies have remained largely under-theorized within social inquiry; most of the migration theories engrossed on solely generalised explanation of migration. Despite extensive theoretical discussions from various disciplinary perspectives in the field of migration studies, certain aspects still remain underexplored or lack sufficient theorization to cover up labourer migration occurred within a national boundary. In this context, we adopt the ‘aspiration-capability framework’ to examine internal labourer migration through a different lens. Here we would specifically emphasize ‘aspiration’ with sociological insights and ‘capabilities’ from a political-economic standpoint. Our analysis explores labourer migration as an ‘aspiration-capability dynamic in capitalist accumulation.’ Keywords: - Labour migration, Aspiration-Capability, Structural Inequality, Capitalist Accumulation |