Infrastructure, labor, and government : a study of Delhi airport

Abstract

Delhi airport is an important infrastructural installation around which urban spaces and production sites are organized. This thesis studies labor, production sites, and urban spaces in the vicinity of Delhi airport at two levels. At one level, I study workers and labor processes within the terminal buildings. I also study labor in multiple sites that lie beyond the airport but exist in close relation to it both geographically as well as in terms of their production functions. These sites include a workshop located in the town of Kapashera on the border between Delhi and the state of Haryana, an urban village called Mehram Nagar that provides taxi services to the airport, and Nangal Dewat, a village displaced as a result of the airport's expansion. My aim is to demonstrate how the production of goods and services in these sites is integral to the functioning of the airport. The thesis approaches Delhi airport as a central research object, through which it analyzes labor processes, informal settlements and urban villages, and modes of formal and informal governance. In this sense, I understand the airport as an infrastructural facility that produces relations between labor, capital, and government. Conceptually, the thesis operates at the interface of infrastructure studies, political economy, and theories of government and political subjectivity. I ask how spatial and temporal relations between the workings of Delhi airport and production sites in surrounding areas give rise to different forms of labor. My empirical investigations show how the transformation of informal settlements and urban villages in the airport's vicinity conditions their role as a source of labor supply for the airport and associated industries. I also demonstrate that this transformation produces political subjects with contentious relationships to government and airport authorities. Because the airport's operations generate profound changes in production relations, the governance of proximate spaces and labor sites is central to its functioning. I study the governing authority of the airport, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), in its relation to labor and urban spaces over which it exerts influence in matters such as eviction, the control of parking spaces and roads, and the fate of urban villages.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English