Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Center for Contemporary South Asia

CANCELLED -- Brokering Citizenship: Rethinking the Role of Civil Society in Citizenship Development Through the Experience of Construction Workers in Beijing

Monday, April 10, 2017

4:00pm – 5:30pm

Birkelund Board Room, Watson Institute 

This event has been cancelled.

Irene Pang is a PhD candidate in Sociology. Based on 19 months of fieldwork conducted in Beijing and Delhi, Pang's dissertation examines the struggles of construction workers in Beijing and Delhi in accessing their citizenship – civil, political, and social – rights, and is the first comparative ethnography on China and India.  Pang focuses on the construction sector not only because it is a critical site of capitalist development, but also because it is the largest employer of low-income internal migrants in China and India. Though legally citizens, low-income internal migrants in both countries are often treated as aliens when they move from rural areas into cities. The experience of construction workers in the city thus provides a site where the exercise and contestation of citizenship becomes observable.Research Interests: Citizenship, labor, internal migrants, development, and comparative research in China and India.

Graduate Student Seminar