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@article{207767,
        author = {Anurag Singh},
        title = {An Ethnographic Field Note on De-skilling, Informality and Everyday Power among Post-Lockdown Construction Workers},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {11},
        pages = {16275-16278},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=207767},
        abstract = {Indian labour policy narrates skill acquisition as a pathway from unemployment to “decent work” and upward mobility. Background: this field note tests that narrative against a single site. Methods: drawing on an ethnographic engagement with three migrant construction workers at an under-construction housing society in Dwarka, Delhi, in April 2022 as the city reopened after COVID-19 lockdowns, it uses thick description, reflexivity and conversational interviews to read one encounter interpretively. Results: a cultivator, a rickshaw puller and a school drop-out had been flattened by the pandemic into interchangeable manual labour at one flat daily wage; power operated through non-decision (the wage was fixed before the worker arrived) and consent (workers called manual labour “better than sitting idle” and received a statutory rest break as a gift); and financial and regulatory inclusion reached them only partially. Conclusion: crisis produced de-skilling rather than skilling; the note offers a reflexive, pre-reform baseline and does not claim generalisation.},
        keywords = {ethnography, informal labour, de-skilling, power, migration, construction workers},
        month = {April},
        }