Surveillant staring: Race and the everyday surveillance of South Asian women after 9/11

Abstract

This article explores young South Asian women’s accounts of being subject to surveillance within a post-September 11th United States political framework, using a combination of surveillance studies and a postcolonial studies attention to practices of racialization and belonging. It looks at non-technological practices of person-to-person surveillance of South Asian women by non-authoritative white Americans. The article discusses young women’s accounts of feeling ‘stared at’ by other Americans in public space, and examines how the effects of this surveillance relates to young women’s identities as South Asians in America. The article argues that citizen surveillance practices have racialized outcomes for young women of South Asian descent that sometimes consolidates a South Asian racial subjectivity within the US. The fieldwork also uncovers an extension of arguments about racialized surveillance to consider cultural bodily practices and clothing artifacts alongside racial identity.