- Name:
- Ms Shreeta Lakhani
- Email address:
- sl94@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title:
- Gendering Notions of Belonging: Complicating the conceptualisation of the belonging of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) bodies in London (working title)
- Year of Study:
- 1
Internal Supervisors
PhD Research
What determines whether one is considered to belong to particular spaces? Is it the legal right to be there, the ability to speak the language native to the space, or one’s perceived physical appearance read through the dominant gaze? Existing scholarship on race, gender, nation and belonging suggests that individual bodies are already inscribed within gendered and racialised social relations that determine whether or not they are seen to belong in particular spaces. In a UK context, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) bodies tend to be labelled either as ‘migrants’ or part of diasporas, in order to attach a condition of foreignness to their bodies. Using a study up approach, this project will conduct non-directive interviews to explore how BAME individuals experience belonging in post-colonial London. In other words, this project will explore how ways of looking (or perceived physical characteristics) affect ways of belonging in physical spaces in order to understand how the body emerges as a politicised subject. In particular, the project aims to explore how due to intersecting oppression (gender, race, class and sexuality), BAME individuals experience belonging differently within the same urban spaces in order to problematise the BAME label, and highlight the existence of contradictory multi-layered discourses of race, gender and class interpellations of BAME bodies.