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'Skills' and 'skill development' feature evermore prominently in international development discourse and in the policies of governments across the global South. Yet, these discourses and policies often proceed with a weak conception of the social circumstances and everyday processes by which skills are acquired, disseminated, and used. This tends to result in approaches to skill development that are simultaneously unrealistic, in the sense that they overlook the multiple social and institutional impediments to remunerative or empowering forms of skill utilisation, and overly restrictive in the sense that they fail to consider the multiple ways in which skills are valued and deployed by individuals and communities. By drawing attention to what Carswell and De Neve term 'the social life of skills,' contributions to this collection expand conceptions of skills and skill development, particularly in relation to four key themes: (1) the social and political construction of certain forms of work as 'skilled' or 'unskilled'; (2) the social processes of skilling in formal, informal and non-formal settings; (3) the political economy of skills and skill development, including their imbrication in forms of exploitation and intersecting inequalities; and (4) the role of skills in the expression of aspirations, identity and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how skills for garment work are acquired in the rural hinterland of Tiruppur, one of India's largest garment manufacturing clusters. Drawing on a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews with garment workers in Tiruppur's hinterland, we document the informal pathways of skill acquisition for garment work and advocate a demand-driven approach to vocational training. Such an approach, first, unsettles linear policy assumptions about direct linkages between training, skills acquisition and access to decent and rewarding employment. We show how rather than being formally trained for employment, villagers gained skills from employment and upskilled themselves on the job. Such upskilling took the form of self-directed learning rather than formal training, and involved spatial and job mobility between companies and sectors. Second, a demand-driven perspective reveals how access to more advanced skills and more desirable jobs is shaped by the structural inequalities of gender, age and caste, which curtail the opportunities of women and the elderly in particular. Finally, policy and research would benefit from a demand-driven approach to training and recruitment that prioritises the skill development needs of local populations and that supports those whose participation in training and labour markets remains constrained by gender, age or caste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article explores the material practices through which lower-caste and poor villagers engage with bureaucracy in contemporary India. We take documents and paperwork - such as ration cards and community certificates - as a 'lens' through which to explore how paper materiality is infused with the politics of power, patronage, and identity. The article brings ethnography from rural Tamil Nadu, South India, in conversation with two bodies of literature: one on the materiality of bureaucracy and one on the nature of political mediation in contemporary India. We demonstrate how everyday engagements with paperwork as well as processes of applying, form filling, and securing recommendations are constitutive of social and political relationships and, ultimately, of citizenship itself. Political mediation around paperwork and bureaucracy generates a hierarchy of citizens rather than equal citizenship for all, yet ordinary villagers transpire as anything but passive. Drawing on patronage networks, engaging in affective performances, and navigating a politics of identity, they actively negotiate access to the state in an attempt to claim their rights as citizens. Biographical information: Grace Carswell is Reader in Geography at the University of Sussex. She has carried out research on rural livelihoods in India, Uganda, and Ethiopia. Geert De Neve is Professor of Social Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Sussex. He has conducted research on a range of labour issues in urban and rural Tamil Nadu. Together with Grace Carswell, he has studied the implementation of social protection schemes in Tamil Nadu as well as broader processes of state-society interaction and neoliberal economic transformation. Byline: Grace Carswell, Geert De Neve

What are the effects of biometric and digital technologies on social protection for the poor in India? Drawing on ethnographic research from rural Tamil Nadu, this paper presents evidence of how new technologies are experienced by beneficiaries of the Public Distribution System (PDS), and analyses the impacts of technology innovations on transparency, exclusion and mediation. The authors focus on the implementation of 'smartcards,' new digitised and Aadhaar-enabled ration cards, introduced in ration shops across Tamil Nadu in 2017. They first document how digitised smartcards and mobile text messages transform transparency for beneficiaries by introducing new opacities and information gaps. They then demonstrate how a lack of transparency (re)produces forms of exclusion that remain a challenge under the automated PDS. Finally, the paper highlights how novel forms of kin and non-kin mediation play a mitigating role in accessing PDS, and constitute a vital part of the infrastructure underpinning social welfare delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]