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Cover -- Table of Contents -- List of Maps and Images -- Map 1.1 Manipur and surrounding states and territories -- Image 1.1  Shanker Talkies, Lamphelpat -- Image 2.1  Central Imphal facing north -- Image 2.2  Multi-storey houses alongside partially completed houses, Uripok Khumanthem Leikai -- Image 2.3  Manhunt billboard, LIC Point -- Image 3.1  State Police at Thangal Bazaar -- Image 3.2  Bir Tikendrajit Flyover with the Ima Keithel behind -- Image 3.3  PLA Memorial at Cheiraoching -- Image 4.1  Advertisement for 23rd Century, Salam Leikai

Race debates have become more frequent at the national level, and the response to racism in the media and by politicians has shifted from denial to acknowledgment to action. Focusing on the experiences of communities from India's Northeast borderland, the author explores the dynamics of race debates in contemporary India

The Northeast border region of India is a crossroads of Southeast Asia, where India meets China and the Himalayas, and home to many ethnic minorities from across the continent. The area is also the birthplace of a number of secessionist and insurgent movements and a hotbed of political fervor and violent instability. In this trailblazing new study, Duncan McDuie-Ra observes the everyday lives of the thousands of men and women who leave the region every year to work, study, and find refuge in Delhi. He examines how new migrants navigate the rampant racism, harassment, and even violence they face upon their arrival in Delhi. But McDuie-Ra does not paint them simply as victims of the city, but also as contributors to Delhi's vibrant community and increasing cosmopolitanism. India's embrace of globalization has created employment opportunities for Northeast migrants in many capitalistic enterprises: shopping malls, restaurants, and call centers. They have been able to create their own "map" of Delhi and their own communities within the larger and often unfriendly one of the metropolis

Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail is an ethnographic study of migrants from India's north-east border region living and working in Delhi, the nation's capital. Northeast India borders China, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. Despite burgeoning interest in the region, little attention is given to the thousands of migrants leaving the region for Indian cities for refuge, work, and study. The stories of Northeast migrants reveal an everyday Northeast India rarely captured elsewhere and offer an alternative view of contemporary India. Northeast migrants covet the employment opportunities created by India's embrace of globalization; shopping malls, restaurants, and call centres. Yet Northeast migrants also experience high levels of racism, harassment, and violence. Far from simply victims of the city, Northeast migrants have created their own 'map' of Delhi, enabling a sense of belonging, albeit an uneasy one. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book will appeal to scholars of anthropology, urban studies, geography, migration, and Asian Studies. - Dit baanbrekende boek is een etnografische studie naar de migranten die in steeds grotere getale van het noordoosten van India naar de hoofdstad Delhi trekken. De sociale, politieke en economische activiteiten van deze etnische minderheden bieden een heel andere kijk op het hedendaagse India. Door de opkomst van het neoliberale globalisme in India vinden deze migranten in Delhi volop werk in restaurants en supermarkten, maar worden zij daar ook geconfronteerd met racisme en geweld. Tegelijkertijd zoeken ze in hun nieuwe omgeving naar een eigen identiteit.

Intro -- CIVIL SOCIETY, DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE SEARCH FOR HUMAN SECURITY: THE POLITICS OF THE ENVIRONMENT, GENDER, AND IDENTITY IN NORTHEAST INDIA -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- GLOSSARY OF NON-ENGLISH TERMS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART 1: BOUNDED SPHERES, BOUNDED IDENTITIES -- CIVIL SOCIETY, DEMOCRATISATION AND HUMAN SECURITY -- THE ASCENDANCY OF THE THIRD SPHERE MODEL -- WHY CIVIL SOCIETY? -- EURO-CENTRISM AND CRITICAL CIVIL SOCIETY -- CIVIL SOCIETY IN INDIA -- HUMAN SECURITY -- APPLYING HUMAN SECURITY -- A CRITICAL STARTING POINT -- COLONIALISM, STATE FORMATION, AND IDENTITY IN NORTHEAST INDIA -- DRIVE-IN ANTHROPOLOGY -- CREATING TRIBES AND HILL TRIBES IN COLONIAL ASSAM -- THE PERSISTENCE OF COLONIAL CATEGORIES: STATE FORMATION AND THE FURTHER POLITICISATION OF IDENTITY -- THE 'OUTSIDERS' DISCOURSE: POLITICAL POWER AND ETHNICITY IN MEGHALAYA -- THE HEGEMONY OF IDENTITY IN MEGHALAYA -- IDENTITY, POWER AND INEQUALITY -- INSECURE IDENTITY -- PART II - MARGINALITY AND VOICE: THE INSECURITY OF CIVIL SOCIETY -- CONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTAL INSECURITY: THE POLITICS OF DEGRADATION AND IDENTITY -- APPROACHING ENVIRONMENTAL INSECURITY -- ENVIRONMENTALISM IN NATIONAL AND LOCAL CONTEXTS -- ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN MEGHALAYA -- URANIUM MINING, COAL MINING, AND 'OUTSIDERS' -- COAL MINING -- ETHNICISING THE ENVIRONMENT -- THE MYTH OF EMPOWERMENT: GENDER, INSECURITY, AND IDENTITY -- APPROACHING GENDER AND INSECURITY -- GENDER-BASED INSECURITY IN THE KHASI HILLS -- GENDER POLITICS IN THE KHASI HILLS -- CONTESTING POWER: RECOVERING AGENCY -- TOWARDS TRANSCENDENCE? -- PART III - TRANSCENDENCE: BRINGING BACK THE POLITICAL -- TRANSCENDENCE: RE-THINKING CIVIL SOCIETY, RE-INTERPRETING HUMAN SECURITY, AND RE-IMAGINING MEGHALAYA -- RE-IMAGINING CIVIL SOCIETY -- RE-INTERPRETING HUMAN SECURITY -- RE-IMAGINING MEGHALAYA.

AbstractThis article focuses on cross-border medical connections between Myanmar and Manipur, India. Non-state actors have been instrumental in creating the networks to bring bodies and body parts back and forth, first bypassing, then enmeshing, state actors. I focus on the movement of patients and medical samples across the border—from western Myanmar to Imphal city and back again—and the health infrastructure that enables it. Analysing these connections makes several contributions to the study of border governance. First, movement from Myanmar to Manipur is primarily for treatment or diagnosis, and these connections project particular ways of thinking about each place—western Myanmar as poor and remote, Manipur as advanced and networked. Second, both Manipur and western Myanmar can be considered in 'transition'—as territories being recalibrated by political dynamics emanating elsewhere yet becoming connected through shared needs. Third, patients and samples move through territories controlled by paramilitary forces, underground groups, and different tribal councils. Routes are sometimes blocked or passage treacherous, testing the limits of conventional notions of bilateral border governance. Finally, cross-border medical connections between Manipur and Myanmar draw attention to the risky cross-border medical mobility of the poor. Rather than seeking to minimize cost, patients utilize Manipur's health infrastructure out of necessity, providing insights into the contours of cross-border medical care in times of transition.

This article explores the centrality of China's cities to skate video; the most popular form for capturing, circulating, and consuming skateboarding. China's urban growth produces endless spots to skate; a spot is assemblage of objects and surfaces that offer the opportunity to perform skateboarding maneuvers (tricks). Skate video is the substance of skate culture, the once quintessentially Californian pastime turned global subculture and industry. After skateboarding left the skatepark for the streets in the 1990s, and once video became easier to circulate digitally through streaming platforms in the mid-2000s, the search for spots to perform and capture unsanctioned street skateboarding spread to China's urban landscapes, beginning with Shenzhen. China's cities are sites of global desire among skateboarders for the perfect surfaces and obstacles created in the built environment and the speed at which they are produced. Using skate video as an archive I make four arguments. First, China's cities imputed with a mythical character; endless spots produced with miraculous speed. Second, skate videos re-map China's cities through the skater's gaze, a form of urban knowledge both unique and widely shared. Third, the search for spots indexes urban development in China, privileging the recent and shunning the past. Fourth, skateboarding in China's cities create spaces for inter-cultural encounter between skateboarders and authority, the public and other skateboarders. The article concludes by discussing the utility of skate video as an alternative visual archive of urban China for foreign audiences and increasingly for skate communities in China itself.

While India has been a popular subject of scholarly analysis in the past decade, the majority of that attention has been focused on its major cities. This volume instead explores contemporary urban life in a smaller city located in India's northeast borderland at a time of dramatic change, showing how this city has been profoundly affected by armed conflict, militarism, displacement, ethnic tensions, and the expansion of neoliberal capitalism.