Wayfinding: Indigenous Migrants in the Service Sector of Metropolitan India

Abstract

In the last decade, large numbers of indigenous youth from the uplands of Northeast India have migrated to metropolitan cities across the country. Many end up in the new service sector, getting jobs in high-end restaurants, shopping malls and spas. The demand for their labour is due to their un-Indian 'exotic Asian' appearance and a reputation for being hardworking and loyal. Such labour market value is a remarkable reversal of their position considering the earlier colonial stereotypes of their savagery and disobedience, reproduced through the de-politicisation of their armed insurrections during the post-colonial period. This paper addresses their daily experiences of vulnerability and marginality as well as the freedom and aspirations that a migratory life seem to engender.It was the second time we were meeting with Choro-this time in his home, a twobedroom apartment where he lived with his wife and three-year-old daughter. A few weeks earlier, we had visited his workplace, one of the top five-star hotels in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. Choro had heard about our research and, as soon as we sat down, he began telling us a story about a magical stone he had found in the village where he grew up in the hills of Manipur, a state adjacent to the border of Myanmar. It was a rare blue stone, traditionally used for ritual purposes, which he had brought along to Thiruvananthapuram. During the last year, Choro's family had faced exceptional misfortune and Choro had been forced to travel back and forth to his home village, exhausting most of his savings on airfares and medical treatments for sick family members. In a dream he learned that it was the stone that was causing all this ill fate. After consulting his mother, he threw the stone into a lake. After this, things started to improve, he conveyed cautiously.Despite a successful career in the service sector that has made him a senior manager of one of the hotel's restaurants, Choro claimed he could think of nothing else than to return home, to the hills of Manipur. His family was there and he had several younger siblings in need of monetary support and encouragement to finish school. The plan was to settle in Ukhrul, the nearest town and the district headquarters, mainly populated by Tangkhul Nagas, the ethnic group to which he and his wife belong. The question they struggled

Women Workers on the Move in South Asia: Shifting Identities in Segmented Labour Markets

“…During fieldwork, it was observed that female migrants with Mongoloid features (McDuie-Ra 2012) were in high demand in the service and care industry due to the fetishisation of their looks in sites in Maharashtra and Kerala. Karlsson and Kikon (2017) also report similar evidence where young migrants from the Northeastern Indian states get located in the emerging service sector in Indian metropolises, working in high-end restaurants, spas, shopping malls and beauty parlours due to their un-Indian, 'exotic', 'Asian' appearance.…”

Light Skin and Soft Skills: Training Indigenous Migrants for the Hospitality Sector in India

“…Karlsson 2003). With so many young people leaving the indigenous homelands, new questions emerge about caring for families and land they have left behind (Karlsson & Kikon 2017). Exploring the issue of care as young migrants become servers in the hospitality industry, we demonstrate how notions of care, skills, and value are constructed and experienced among indigenous migrants themselves.…”

“…The experiences of Naga youths from Northeast India is different from accounts of people from conflict areas around the world who cross international borders as transnational migrants and refugees. As we discuss in greater detail elsewhere (Karlsson & Kikon 2017) though they travel to far away places, culturally very different from their home societies, their migrant experiences do not revolve around the common trauma of border crossing, acquiring visa and gaining a legal status in their new destinations. Nor do they follow the pattern of internal migration, for example, the type of seasonal or cyclical migration common among many tribal or indigenous peoples of central India (cf.…”

Contested Urban Spaces in Delhi: Experiences of Discrimination of Women from Northeast India

“…The study done by Duncan Mcdui Ra is important in identifying the various localities where migrants from the Northeast stay segregated in pockets in the city, replicating their unique native lifestyles. These ‘stretched life worlds’ or the process of ‘stretching’ cited by Karlsson and Kikon (2017) is an idea developed by Fiona Samuels, where she says that even if an individual is living in a specific space, another place (most of the time the place from where he or she has migrated) keeps lingering in his or her life. This is significant in case of these migrants as the ‘replication’ of Northeast life in the cities of Delhi has further led to heightened prejudices among the non-migrants in the city as these pockets bear a very distinct look as compared to the rest of the North Indian society.…”