Everyday objects and conversations

Abstract

This chapter employs analytic autoethnography to document and interpret the affective relations between the diverse categories of identification that the author is subject to in the transnational context of the UK. It investigates the socio-cultural import of being a migrant student/academic in the UK Higher Education and critically evaluates the points of intersection between personal and institutional biases. The chapter further seeks to narrativise the process of critical self-reflection by referencing the author’s interaction with taxi drivers in the UK. The analysis draws on post-colonial criticism, affect studies and “discomfort” as a critical concept to critique the affective structures of “nation” and “nationalism” that naturalises one’s complicity in narratives of power and oppression. The chapter identifies “epistemologies of ignorance” within the context that situates the author’s south Asian identity in the transnational space of the UK and extends it as essential to interpreting the manifestations of “hostile environment” that migrant workers are subject to in the UK. Finally, the chapter proposes narratives of “discomfort” to arrive at the emotional histories that bind categories of identification to their social manifestations.