ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the context and rationale for analysing and theorising the relationship between socioeconomic inequalities deriving from gender, class and caste relations and the classroom experience of poor children in urban India. It explains the significance of the questions asked and answered in this book with reference to contemporary policy and social context in India and explains how these questions offer a crucial intervention in dominant development discourses centring on the relationship between poverty and poor children’s schooling in the global South. Describing the trajectory of sociology of education as a discipline in India, it also explains the key theoretical contributions made by this monograph in developing accounts of childhood and schooling. Most importantly, it brings out the broader context of informal work and its significance as well as explaining the term, ‘labour class’ used in the title of the book. The last part of the chapter describes the research methods and the way this monograph is organised.
