Can Recruitment be Fair? Possibilities and Paradoxes of Ethical Recruitment in Eastern Himalayas

Nirvan Pradhan explores recruitment zones in the Eastern Himalayas as part of migration infrastructure within the more extensive global labour regimes. The paper argues that recruitment zones operate as affective spaces in transforming the discontent of educated young people into dreams of social mobility and upliftment through the economy of anticipation. Drawing on the biographies of aspiring migrants with college-level qualifications, who are either unemployed or employed in call centres or private jobs in Siliguri, I show how recruitment zones are a space in which young people are provided with a platform that while devalues their education also allows them to reclaim local visions of masculine success.