Northeast Migrants in Delhi

Receives accolades by the ICAS 8 Committee 2013 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.Most accessible and captivating work for the non-specialist reader Accolade by the ICAS 8 Reading Committee.

"McDuie-Ra’s illuminating account of the unexpected lives of northeast migrants in a metropolis compels us to rethink conventional ways of thinking about India’s changing frontier lands and peoples. This rigorously researched and superbly written book is anthropology at its best.” - Amita Baviskar, Associate Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University "The book is perhaps the first of its kind to apply the concept of race outside the usual typology of caste-versus-race studies. It offers a refreshing take on contemporary challenges to the idea of an "imagined" India as neoliberal capitalism transforms social spaces and relationships through migration and new forms of labor." - Babyrani Yumnam, Binghamton University, State University of New York on newbooks.asia

Duncan McDuie-Ra is professor of Urban Sociology at University of Newcastle, Australia. His most recent sole-authored books are Borderland City in New India (2016), Debating Race in Contemporary India (2015), and Northeast Migrants in Delhi: Race, Refuge and Retail (2012).