ILPC 2027

This empirical paper aims to unpack the inter-connections between internal labour migration, adolescence and exploitation of migrant labourers in cities. Taking the case of adolescent migrant construction labourers in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, it examines the inner mechanisms of adolescent labour management process through the lens of precarious work that characterizes exploitative employment relations and poor work conditions. Dhaka’s construction sector employs an overwhelming bulk of adolescent migrant labourers. Their recruitment and work conditions have yet not been explored in the existing literature. Physical fitness and ability to engage in hard work make the adolescent labourers a viable choice to the recruiters. Although adolescent labourers are able to pick skills and accomplish assigned tasks faster than adult labourers, the recruiters do not treat them as adult in terms of wage and freedom of movement. Wage cuts, underpayment and irregular payment critically depress their wage. While the discretionary practices of wage payment create conditions of wage bondage, excessive surveillance of adolescent labourers limits their freedom of movement inside and outside project boundary. The control relations dominated by individual recruiters confine them to a precarious life. This paper builds on synthesised data from a survey and in-depth interviews of migrant construction labourers, 100 and 15 respectively, and interviews of their five individual recruiters. Using the conceptual tool of precarious work and coining the unique term ‘prisonised employment’, I argue that increasing adolescent employment is a new dimension of precarious work. Recruitment and management of adolescent migrant labourers through individual labour recruiters intensifies pressures on the young labourers and limits scopes for labour protection in cities.