Masculine borders as alienation of racialized, undocumented south Asian migrant workers in Greece

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani low-class male migrants in Greece are marked by migrant precarity due to their undocumented status and by a flattened South Asian racialised masculine identity. Collectively othered, they struggle with symbolic borders created by colonial and postcolonial encounters, national identities, religion, and masculine expectations. This article explores how ideologies of prejudice and divisiveness in Greece work in tandem with articulations of othering and national (un)belonging from the men’s home countries to define both their interpersonal relationships and labour outcomes in Greece. It proposes the concept of ‘masculine borders’ to describe processes through which culturally specific masculinities of South Asian men are (re)produced or reconfigured relationally and hierarchically to each other by the capitalist project with the aim of alienating and discipling workers. With such everyday bordering discourses, a novel articulation of Marxian alienation of workers from each other emerges. In this case, masculine norms mesh with Islamophobia and racism to thicken masculine borders between Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and Indian men, assisting in the efficient accumulation of surplus by the capitalist class.