Towards A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF INDENTURED LABOUR | March 5-6, 2019

TOWARDS ESTABLISHING A COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF INDENTURED LABOUR

Two-day International Workshop – 5th – 6th March 2019
UoM, Room G3 New Academic Complex (NAC)
University of Mauritius

Organised by The Centre for Research on Slavery and Indenture, University of Mauritius, in collaboration with Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund / Secretariat, Indentured Labour Route Project, ICS – Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, The Colour of Labour: the Racialized Lives of Migrants, a project of the European Research Council

 

Themes to be discussed 

The Archives of Contract and Indentured labour 

Definitions and categories of unfree labour 

Continuity of the 19th-century indentured labour framework in contemporary international contexts

Labour in the Social transformation process and remnants of the plantation world 

Case studies: Hawaii, Guyana, Mauritius 

Discussion on the latest research on Indentured Labour 

Description 

The workshop will examine from a comparative and connected-histories perspective the experience of unfree, indentured and contract labour in different plantation or plantation-like contexts of the 19th century. We aim to work towards converging analytical concepts regarding bonded labour and to explore how the legacy of plantation labour forms, practices and associated social categories still resonate in our contemporary world. We also aim to discuss the plantation-related processes of producing racialized social categories racialization and their transformation through time. 

Guest speaker: Dr. Cristiana Bastos, COLOUR PI:

“Comparing and connecting: labour and racialization in plantation and industrial economies – notes from colonial Guiana, Hawaii and New England”

 

Nicholas B. Miller, “Placing Hawai‘i on the Map of Indenture: The Challenges of Exceptionalism”

Marcelo Moura Mello, “Madrasis in Guyana: thinking through race, labour and religion”

Colette Le Petitcorps, “Domestic service and ethnicisation at the age of property development on sugar fields in Mauritius”

Rita Kantu, “Sweet Darjeeling: land, labour and racialisation in Bois Cheri tea estate, Mauritius”

 

Programme International workshop 2019