Lecture
Racial Capitalism, Sexuality and Labour: Experience of Young Northeast Women in the Spa Industry in Hyderabad, India
- Date
- Wednesday 18 September 2024
- Time
- Location
-
Pieter de la Court
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden - Room
- 3A.21
There has been a large-scale migration of population from Northeastern states to India’s metropolitan cities in the past two decades under neo-liberal economic policies blurring the historical disjuncture between the perceived ‘mainland’ and the country’s Northeast. While this demonstrates social and economic mobility, such movements have also produced racial discrimination, labor exploitation, hostility, and violence against North Easterners as shown in the recent literature (See Mc Duie- Ra, 2012; Haksar, 2016; Kikon & Karlsson, 2020 and others).
Building on this literature, this talk looks at how race, sexuality and labor intersect in the soft skill industries, especially in the Spa centers, and examines how specific forms of racial capitalism in India produce complex experiences of discrimination and everyday violence against young Northeastern women who migrate to India’s metropolitan cities. By analyzing the insights gleaned from fieldwork among spa workers, this research attempts to understand a) the dual aspect of how the flourishing field of affective and soft skill labour field such as the spa industry is intrinsically tied up with racialized and sexualized qualities of women from North East India and how young women who aspire for mobility use their ‘racial capital’ in entering and maintaining sustained income in the spa industry b) How racial capitalism in the spa industry leads to specific forms of discrimination, sexual exploitation, harassment and violence? By foregrounding these empirical data, the presentation will argue for a nuanced theorization of racial capitalism that accounts for the intersection of race, labor, and sexuality to enable a comparative reading of how mobility and migration confronts racial questions in unique ways in a non-western context.