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SUMMARY:South Asia-Africa Seminar Series: Talking about Unfree Labour     
                                            - Bhanupriya Rao (Founder and E
 ditor-in-Chief\, Behanbox)\, Michael Odijie (University of Oxford)
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260127T140000Z
DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260127T153000Z
UID:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/f7f5940c-6acc-44c7-9342-ba943051387c/
DESCRIPTION:'Honorary labour': Women’s Labour and the Political Economy 
 of Care\nBhanupriya Rao  (Behanbox)\n\n1 million women form the edifice of
  India's care and health infrastructure. Yet\, they are  not employees of 
 the state. They are designated as 'volunteers' and paid an 'honorarium'. D
 rawing on the investigative journalism and data-driven archives of Behanbo
 x's  "ASHA Story"\, my talk  examines the lived realities of India's care 
 providers and how the "honorary" status of frontline health workers (ASHAs
  and Anganwadis) serves as a legal and economic mechanism for state-sancti
 oned exploitation and feminised notions of care institutionalised in polic
 y and governance.\n\nBhanupriya Rao is the founder of Behanbox-a feminist 
 digital platform that does deep dive reportage on issues from a lens of ge
 nder and marginality in India. She is a passionate advocate for just and d
 emocratic governance and policy making. For two decades\, she had been inv
 olved in grassroots movements like Right to Food\, Work and Information an
 d working with civil society groups in strengthening governance and welfar
 e delivery systems. \n\nSubsidising Chocolate: Unfree Labour and Everyday 
 Exploitation in West Africa’s Cocoa Economies\nMichael E. Odijie (Oxford
 ) \n\nThis talk draws on my forthcoming book project on labour exploitatio
 n in West and Central African cocoa economies to rethink “unfree labour
 ” beyond the language of exceptional criminality. I argue that unfreedom
  is often produced structurally—through low and volatile farm incomes\, 
 seasonal labour bottlenecks\, frontier expansion\, and systems of intermed
 iation that blur responsibility and make exit costly for workers. These co
 nditions generate a spectrum of coercive ties\, including indebtedness\, w
 age withholding\, dependency on patrons or recruiters\, and the normalisat
 ion of unpaid family and children’s work as a coping strategy.  In conve
 rsation with labour struggles in India’s care economy\, the talk offers 
 a cross-regional lens on how essential work becomes systematically underva
 lued—and what a worker-centred approach to reform would require.\n\nDr M
 ichael Ehis Odijie is an Associate Professor of African Studies and Africa
 n History\, holding a joint appointment between the Oxford School of Globa
 l and Area Studies and the Faculty of History. He is Nigerian\, and his re
 search focuses on a range of historical and contemporary themes in West Af
 rica\, including local networks against slavery and labour exploitation\, 
 the cocoa value chain\, EU-Africa relations\, and the politics of developm
 ent.\n\nSpeakers:\nBhanupriya Rao (Founder and Editor-in-Chief\, Behanbox)
 \, Michael Odijie (University of Oxford)
LOCATION:St Antony's College (Pavilion Room)\, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
TZID:Europe/London
URL:https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/f7f5940c-6acc-44c7-9342-ba943051387c/
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DESCRIPTION:Talk:South Asia-Africa Seminar Series: Talking about Unfree La
 bour                                                - Bhanupriya Rao (Foun
 der and Editor-in-Chief\, Behanbox)\, Michael Odijie (University of Oxford
 )
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