2020/11/17 by Jayaseelan Raj
paper · doi:10.1111/taja.12375
Abstract What does ‘identity’ really mean for the migrant workforce beyond its function in production relations? How are forms of identity evoked within broader social relations in a migrant context? This article explores these questions by looking at how the Tamil Dalit tea workers in the South Indian state of Kerala experience the stigmatisation of their identity categories in the context of two significant events that occurred in the tea belt—an economic crisis and a conflict between two states over managing a dam. The way ‘migrant’ workers are categorised in their ‘host’ society is discussed here as fundamental to how they experience life both in and out of their workplaces. Extending Philippe Bourgois's notion of conjugated oppression, I argue that when dominant groups stigmatise, evoke and employ certain aspects of the workers' identities to their disadvantage, they are engaging in a phenomenon that I call ‘categorical oppression’.