ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the role of socio-cultural propensities of working peoples and their lived experiences in their pursuit of wellbeing. The worldview of workers transformed towards the emergence of a new ethics of human, civilised, and dignified life from the aftermath of the WW I and onwards. In this worldview, the non-material component of wellbeing in the form of fraternisation in social connection and dignification in social exchanges was emphasised. This development was an outcome of the advocacy of ILO, the struggles of organised workers for industrial democracy, and caste upliftment campaigns among socially disadvantaged groups. All these took place amid the interplay between the migration pattern and changing social composition of workers on one side and intersection between economic relations and socio-cultural proclivities of working peoples, on the other. The new ethics mediated the struggles of social security and a sign of respectability. However, endogamous ethnicisation remained enduring, which had constraining ramification for particularly women and a fissure between migrants and the locals. With a focus on the socio-cultural roots of accumulation and wellbeing, the chapter historically addresses the non-material dimensions of wellbeing amongst migrant workers.
