Vulnerable migrant women and Beauty care in the city of Hyderabad

Abstract Positioned as a global service hub, Hyderabad attracts aspirational migrants from across the globe but pushes many into low paid service work. This paper examines the intersection of gender and migrant workers from three northeast Indian states (Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram) performing beauty care work in salons and spas that makes up the informal sector. Such care work and service providers keep the global service hub of Hyderabad moving. Beauty care work, as a form of aesthetic labor, takes its toll on the bodies of the women workers. This paper discusses the experiences of the first-generation female migrants who perform beauty care work and the embodied precarity that shapes their everyday lives. This paper also reveals how systemic inequalities tied to gender and urban economic restructuring coalesce in the lived experiences of these workers by situating beauty care work within the broader context of economic and social precarity. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of precarity by foregrounding the voices of marginalized Northeastern Indian migrants in urban India.