ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka’s economic landscape has been transformed by structures of imperialism, within which local class formations and a logic of accumulation by subordination have taken shape. The economic subsumption of ethnicity and gender under postcolonial articulations of nationalism have overseen the preservation of uneven development processes from one epoch to another, exacerbated by neoliberal reforms enacted in 1977. It is against the backdrop of this neoliberal restructuring that temporary labour migration has taken root as one of a limited number of livelihood strategies for populations geographically and demographically excluded from development. This chapter outlines the macroeconomic shifts that have propelled Sri Lanka to its current political-economic juncture and situates the role of temporary labour migration within that narrative. The first section briefly outlines class relations and capital accumulation strategies formed under colonialism. The second section focuses on economic reconfigurations following the 1977 neoliberal turn, examining how Sri Lankan neoliberalism was assembled from its own social milieu and appropriated the logic of accumulation by subordination first exercised under colonialism. The final section addresses labour migration more specifically, by examining the changing demographics and policy responses to migration since its widespread occurrence in the late 1970s.
