University of Cambridge
Belonging in the Segregated City: Gender, community and urban citizenship in Mumbai, India
Abstract
dc:description.abstractThe rights of Muslim women have received increasing attention in recent years from a diverse range of political groups. The resurgence of Hindu majoritarian politics in contemporary India has been accompanied by a growing acceptability of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric, and increasing Muslim segregation; simultaneously, new forms of mobilisation by Muslim women’s movements in the past two decades have challenged dominant constructions of the compliant ‘Muslim woman’, while highlighting the forms of exclusion they face. However, the everyday experiences and contestations of Muslim women in the social and political spaces of the city remain underexplored. The thesis examines evolving notions of urban belonging in the context of ethno-religious segregation at the intersection of gendered and minority rights in India. It explores everyday gendered negotiations of belonging to urban space in and from segregated neighbourhoods in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Here, the analysis of belonging extends to critically examine the situated understandings and negotiations of closely related concepts of community and citizenship over a period of socio-spatial-political change. In exploring how gender mediates everyday socio-spatial-political claims to the segregated city, the thesis explores two interrelated areas: First, it examines the everyday gendered contestations of urban space to understand evolving social relations and constructions of identity and community, taking a socio-spatial approach. Second, it investigates intersectional contestations of citizenship through a socio-political analysis of the situated experiences, practices, and strategies of residents in segregated neighbourhoods to claim urban belonging through a socio-political approach. The research adopts a multi-scalar approach, grounded in intra-urban comparison of two segregated neighbourhoods. Analysis draws on qualitative data including interviews, participant observation and oral histories conducted over nine months of fieldwork to examine how multiple power structures and the politics of urban space and infrastructure relate to socio-political relations and everyday negotiations of socio-spatial belonging. The thesis unpacks the narratives and modes that construct socio-political subjectivities and socio-spatial belonging at different scales, and reveals how urban complexity complicates understandings of belonging, community and citizenship. In doing so, the thesis contributes to scholarship across urban studies, political geography and postcolonial feminist geography, providing an intersectional investigation of emerging gendered social relations in the context of urban segregation.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2020
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Bhatkal, Tanvi
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Lemanski, Charlotte
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.70025
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/322568