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The study utilizes Labour Force Surveys (LFS) for Barbados, Dominica, and St. Lucia for selected periods within 1996 – 2004 to analyse the themes of private rates of returns to the individual investment in education; and inter-industry wage structure and the subthemes of public sector pay premium and the gender pay gap. The interval coded nature of the earnings data reported in the LFS, requires the use of an interval regression model estimated by maximum likelihood techniques. A key empirical finding in the study is that the Eastern Caribbean labour market places a relatively high valuation on formally acquired post-primary human capital assets. The industrial wage structure in the selected countries reflects the effects of recent trade policy changes in regard to agriculture. The overall inter-industry wage dispersion was found to be high in Dominica and St. Lucia, remaining relatively constant in the two periods in the latter country. In Barbados the inter-industry wage structure was substantial but unlike the other countries expanded over time. The study finds the ceteris paribus public sector pay premium in the recent past has improved for women and is relatively large and suggests public sector workers are securing a high rent through employment in this sector. A gender pay gap in the range of 14 percent – 20 percent is detected and in Dominica there is also evidence of a sizeable ethnic pay disadvantage for male members of the island's indigenous population. In all respects the outcomes for the selected countries follow a clear pattern that mirrors the findings in the empirical literature on the Caribbean.

This thesis explores the politics and consequences of road construction for local populations and migrant road workers in Ladakh. Through a political ecology framework, I consider road construction as the transformation of an environment in which different agents act through specific socio-political arrangements and for purposes that are socially and culturally mediated. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in remote villages and among groups of Nepali and Jharkhandi road workers in Ladakh, the thesis documents the case of the Zanskar Highway, a 292 km long trans- Himalayan road that has been under construction since the 1970s. It analyses the reasons why states build roads, nationally and more specifically in the contested landscape of Ladakh; why people want roads; how people negotiate roads and their trajectory; and what the consequences of roads and road construction are in terms of mobility, isolation, resource use, livelihoods and well-being. In the thesis, I question the roads-development nexus, and argue that the reasons why states build roads are extremely diverse and have changed over time. I argue that road construction is a highly political process determined by conflicting motivations and perceptions. I also argue that the consequences of roads are complex, often ambiguous and region-specific, and that gains and losses that occur because of roads and their construction are unequally distributed, within and between local and migrant populations. The research makes an original contribution to road studies by studying the political, socio-economic and symbolic consequences of both roads and the process of their construction for the populations that live near new roads and those who build them. It also links ex-ante with ex-post road studies by looking at what happens during the process of construction. Finally, it contributes to Ladakh studies by documenting the history of road construction in the region and providing the first study of migrants in Ladakh.

Drawing on workplace ethnography at a farm in the East of England and interviews with former participants on the UK's temporary foreign worker programme, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, this thesis contributes to understanding of the everyday work and living experiences of migrant workers in UK horticulture. In particular, it assesses the influence of supermarket-driven supply chains and of immigration status on these experiences. This thus reveals a labour process which is strongly shaped by structural factors, yet workers' agency is also shown to play an important part. The analysis is organised around working and living spaces. It first explores the living spaces of the camp in which migrant workers were required to reside as a result of the conditions attached to the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. Such conditions, it is argued, give rise to both social and physical enclosure and thus to employers' control of migrant workers. Secondly, the thesis focuses on everyday work spaces, illustrating how migrants' work efforts are influenced by two features of production operating in UK food supply chains: just in time and total quality control. The role of surveillance and technology are shown to be important in habituating migrants' bodies and their work efforts. The analysis of spaces of work also reveals how the piece rate form of payment and uncertainty over rates of pay are used to gain workers' consent and intensification of work effort. Moreover, it contributes to understanding of the bodily effects of that effort. The thesis further explores leisure and consumption spaces away from the camp. These can be sites of stigma, racism and exclusion and simultaneously reveal the working of a transnational social field. The analysis of these spaces provides evidence of how immigration status and nationality can shape both migrants' own identities and how others perceive them.