Respect, status and domestic work: Female migrants at home and work

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a complex and often contradictory process for female, ethnic minority, migrant strangers, moving as domestic workers to Delhi, India’s capital. Drawing on empirical work in a village in Jharkhand State, which has witnessed increasing migration of adolescent girls as domestic workers to Delhi over the last two decades, this paper highlights the experience of tribal domestic workers at home and at work. It points to their agency in dealing with the contradictions they face between earning incomes, acquiring markers of status and gaining respect across the urban and rural worlds they stride.