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April 01, 2026
Pushed Out, Worn Down: Urban Displacement and the Crises of Social Reproduction in Delhi
In collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, the Centre for Human Rights Research (CHRR) is hosting Dr. Arpita Biswas for a lecture titled “Pushed Out, Worn Down: Urban Displacement and the Crises of Social Reproduction in Delhi.”
The lecture will be held on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 from 1:00 – 2:30 pm in 108 St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba – Fort Garry Campus. For information on getting to the University of Manitoba, see: https://umanitoba.ca/about-um/our-campuses/getting-here
This is a free event. No registration is required.
This seminar is a part of our annual Critical Conversations seminar series. This year, the seminar series will focus on feminist research methodologies.
About the Lecture
In the past two to three decades, profit-driven urban renewal projects have transformed low-income informal settlements in developing countries into hotspots of population displacement. A rich body of literature is emerging on this topic, but research on its gendered impacts remains slender. Marxist scholars have conceptualized expropriated land primarily as a means of production and analyzed displacement’s effects on the productive sphere. Marxist-feminists remedy this by examining displacement from the viewpoint of its effects on the reproductive sphere. In doing so, they give us a much broader understanding of the processes that constitute and shape the capitalist system. Drawing inspiration from the approach, this paper aims to explore the effects of displacement on women’s burden and capacity for social reproduction. By undertaking a case study of Delhi, it examines the implications of forced eviction and resettlement for the crises of social reproduction for labor – the mechanisms that have led to the crises and the forms such crises have taken. Using data collected in the field, both qualitative and quantitative, it demonstrates how displaced women struggle to reproduce labor power and familial and community relations. In the process, the paper contributes to our understanding of displacement’s effects on life-making activities for a long time.
About the Speakers
Arpita Biswas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political economy, urban development, and feminist economics. She is currently working on two research projects: one examines the political economy of urban displacement in South Asian cities and the other studies the relationship between women’s employment status and the incidence of spousal violence. She uses mixed methods in her research and has carried out field work in Delhi, India.
