Natasha Raheja
Biographic Data
| ID | 125048 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Natasha Raheja |
| GIVEN NAMES | Natasha |
| FAMILY NAME | Raheja |
| SIGNATURE | RAHEJA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6593-9727 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Borders, labor, and beyond
Harsha Walia is the winner of the 2022 Conrad M. Arensberg Award given by the Society for the Anthropology of Work for outstanding contributions to the anthropology of work from inside the discipline and beyond. Walia is a scholar, activist, and organizer committed to migrant justice and border abolition. She is also author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Press 2021), Undoing Border I…
Fuzzy borders
In the western Indian city of Jodhpur, computer typists provide migration brokerage services to Pakistani Hindu refugee-migrants and Indian immigration officers. Such encounters and their interpretations contrast with the Indian state's emphasis on governmental proximity and immediate state-subject relations. Though computer typists-who I am calling brokers-are essential mediators, their acts of mediation are underrecognized. Immigration officers…
Bureaucratic Portraiture and Practices of Citizenship
In lay and academic discourse, bureaucracy almost seems coterminous with the production and circulation of paper, writing, and type. Indeed, the flows of bureaucratic paperwork and documentation weigh heavy, but how are other media and material forms implicated in bureaucratic relationships and encounters? This Special Section considers the photographic portrait as an enduring bureaucratic technology across different histories and geographies. Ho…
Visualizing Citizenship in a Bureaucratic Frame
In this article, I focus on how Pakistani Hindu migrant men in India circulate bureaucratic portraits of reportedly forcefully converted women, leveraging the evidentiary value of images within a visual idiom of liberal citizenship. The style of these portraits—rectangularly framed, front‐facing individuals—is akin to the style of passport photos. The images and their captions circulate as visual evidence to reify normative claims to Indian citiz…
Virtual Belonging, Digital Diaspora, and Sindhi Hindu Identity in the Early 2000s
This article explores online articulations of Sindhi Hindu identity in 2010. The early 2000s mark a key moment of generational shift in the post-Partition Sindhi Hindu diaspora during an era of engagement with websites and virtual discussion forums more broadly. Tracking three diasporic websites, this article helps us to understand what virtual spaces have offered those who are distal from the imagined homelands of their longing. My analysis of t…
Our Sisters and Daughters
This article examines how Hindu migrant-refugee men use the digital smartphone application WhatsApp to make collective claims on Indian citizenship based on their experiences of exclusion as a religious minority in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term digital and in-person ethnography, I explore the ways that Pakistani Hindu migrant-refugee men commonly exchange images of young Hindu women, reportedly forcefully converted as part of marriages to Muslim…
Governing by Proximity
This article argues that proximity is a mode of governance that both enchants aspirational citizen-subjects and exposes ambivalent state workings. I track face-to-face and digitally mediated interactions-over eight years, from 2014 to 2022-between Indian politicians and Pakistani Hindu migrants in the Thar Desert region. Officials and politicians govern by proximity when their felt presence raises hopes and generates attachments with constituents…
Neither Here nor There
Pakistani Hindu refugee claims in India are shaped by both the international refugee regime and the regional South Asian refugee regime, which have overlapping and diverging notions of what constitutes refugeeness. Though both the international refugee regime and Partition-era-derived South Asian refugee regime emphasize vulnerability as a feature of refugeeness, the former evaluates refugee claims on the basis of statelessness and the latter on …
Ishaare
Interview with S hashwati T alukdar
Warriors of Goja
Taking a widely received, winning entry in a televised Indian talent show entitled the Warriors of Goja as its point of departure, my paper is organized around discussions of the body, pain, and pleasure. I aim to raise questions around the subject/objectification of the Sikh male body and examine points of continuity from the colonial era typification of Sikh men as a martial race to contemporary renderings of Sikh men as hyper-macho. I examine …
Governing by Proximity
This article argues that proximity is a mode of governance that both enchants aspirational citizen-subjects and exposes ambivalent state workings. I track face-to-face and digitally mediated interactions-over eight years, from 2014 to 2022-between Indian politicians and Pakistani Hindu migrants in the Thar Desert region. Officials and politicians govern by proximity when their felt presence raises hopes and generates attachments with constituents…
Neither Here nor There
Pakistani Hindu refugee claims in India are shaped by both the international refugee regime and the regional South Asian refugee regime, which have overlapping and diverging notions of what constitutes refugeeness. Though both the international refugee regime and Partition-era-derived South Asian refugee regime emphasize vulnerability as a feature of refugeeness, the former evaluates refugee claims on the basis of statelessness and the latter on …
Fuzzy borders
In the western Indian city of Jodhpur, computer typists provide migration brokerage services to Pakistani Hindu refugee-migrants and Indian immigration officers. Such encounters and their interpretations contrast with the Indian state's emphasis on governmental proximity and immediate state-subject relations. Though computer typists-who I am calling brokers-are essential mediators, their acts of mediation are underrecognized. Immigration officers…
Our Sisters and Daughters
This article examines how Hindu migrant-refugee men use the digital smartphone application WhatsApp to make collective claims on Indian citizenship based on their experiences of exclusion as a religious minority in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term digital and in-person ethnography, I explore the ways that Pakistani Hindu migrant-refugee men commonly exchange images of young Hindu women, reportedly forcefully converted as part of marriages to Muslim…
Borders, labor, and beyond
Harsha Walia is the winner of the 2022 Conrad M. Arensberg Award given by the Society for the Anthropology of Work for outstanding contributions to the anthropology of work from inside the discipline and beyond. Walia is a scholar, activist, and organizer committed to migrant justice and border abolition. She is also author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Press 2021), Undoing Border I…
Warriors of Goja
Taking a widely received, winning entry in a televised Indian talent show entitled the Warriors of Goja as its point of departure, my paper is organized around discussions of the body, pain, and pleasure. I aim to raise questions around the subject/objectification of the Sikh male body and examine points of continuity from the colonial era typification of Sikh men as a martial race to contemporary renderings of Sikh men as hyper-macho. I examine …
Warriors of Goja
Taking a widely received, winning entry in a televised Indian talent show entitled the Warriors of Goja as its point of departure, my paper is organized around discussions of the body, pain, and pleasure. I aim to raise questions around the subject/objectification of the Sikh male body and examine points of continuity from the colonial era typification of Sikh men as a martial race to contemporary renderings of Sikh men as hyper-macho. I examine …
Interview with S hashwati T alukdar
Ishaare
Neither Here nor There
Pakistani Hindu refugee claims in India are shaped by both the international refugee regime and the regional South Asian refugee regime, which have overlapping and diverging notions of what constitutes refugeeness. Though both the international refugee regime and Partition-era-derived South Asian refugee regime emphasize vulnerability as a feature of refugeeness, the former evaluates refugee claims on the basis of statelessness and the latter on …
Virtual Belonging, Digital Diaspora, and Sindhi Hindu Identity in the Early 2000s
This article explores online articulations of Sindhi Hindu identity in 2010. The early 2000s mark a key moment of generational shift in the post-Partition Sindhi Hindu diaspora during an era of engagement with websites and virtual discussion forums more broadly. Tracking three diasporic websites, this article helps us to understand what virtual spaces have offered those who are distal from the imagined homelands of their longing. My analysis of t…
Our Sisters and Daughters
This article examines how Hindu migrant-refugee men use the digital smartphone application WhatsApp to make collective claims on Indian citizenship based on their experiences of exclusion as a religious minority in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term digital and in-person ethnography, I explore the ways that Pakistani Hindu migrant-refugee men commonly exchange images of young Hindu women, reportedly forcefully converted as part of marriages to Muslim…
Governing by Proximity
This article argues that proximity is a mode of governance that both enchants aspirational citizen-subjects and exposes ambivalent state workings. I track face-to-face and digitally mediated interactions-over eight years, from 2014 to 2022-between Indian politicians and Pakistani Hindu migrants in the Thar Desert region. Officials and politicians govern by proximity when their felt presence raises hopes and generates attachments with constituents…
Bureaucratic Portraiture and Practices of Citizenship
In lay and academic discourse, bureaucracy almost seems coterminous with the production and circulation of paper, writing, and type. Indeed, the flows of bureaucratic paperwork and documentation weigh heavy, but how are other media and material forms implicated in bureaucratic relationships and encounters? This Special Section considers the photographic portrait as an enduring bureaucratic technology across different histories and geographies. Ho…
Visualizing Citizenship in a Bureaucratic Frame
In this article, I focus on how Pakistani Hindu migrant men in India circulate bureaucratic portraits of reportedly forcefully converted women, leveraging the evidentiary value of images within a visual idiom of liberal citizenship. The style of these portraits—rectangularly framed, front‐facing individuals—is akin to the style of passport photos. The images and their captions circulate as visual evidence to reify normative claims to Indian citiz…
Borders, labor, and beyond
Harsha Walia is the winner of the 2022 Conrad M. Arensberg Award given by the Society for the Anthropology of Work for outstanding contributions to the anthropology of work from inside the discipline and beyond. Walia is a scholar, activist, and organizer committed to migrant justice and border abolition. She is also author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Press 2021), Undoing Border I…
Fuzzy borders
In the western Indian city of Jodhpur, computer typists provide migration brokerage services to Pakistani Hindu refugee-migrants and Indian immigration officers. Such encounters and their interpretations contrast with the Indian state's emphasis on governmental proximity and immediate state-subject relations. Though computer typists-who I am calling brokers-are essential mediators, their acts of mediation are underrecognized. Immigration officers…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Art (4 works) · Citizenship (4 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (4 works)