Using indigenous sport as resistance against migrant exclusion: Kabaddi and South Asian male migrants in Greece

ABSTRACT

This article discusses a unique cultural politics of identity affirmation and resistance enacted in the rural spaces of Greece by male migrants from India and Pakistan through the game of Kabaddi, a rural indigenous sport. Drawing on interviews with South Asian migrant men and observation of Kabaddi tournament in Greece, it argues that the play of Kabaddi offers deliberate performative acts of masculine resistance against the emasculatory bordering regimes of illegality, deportability and racial otherness. Kabaddi tournaments occur as highly masculinised, public, collective, celebratory, yet potentially subversive spectacles. Kabaddi allows South Asian migrant men to acquire culturally specific masculine capital through displays of muscular masculinity. As spectators and participants, they collectively engage in cultural affirmation and wresting subjectivity against bordering regimes that subjugate racialised migrant men into (im)mobility, enforce labour disciplining and invisibility and emasculate them into abjectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Greece
• Kabaddi
• undocumented South Asian migrants
• masculine capital
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for example, ASPIRE – Activity, Sport and Play for the Inclusion of Refugees in Europe. https://www.coe.int/en/web/sport-migrant-integration-directory/aspire.

2 In Hong Kong, deliberate attempts to promote social inclusion of South Asian migrant workers occur through state-sponsored community-based Kabaddi workshops, Kabaddi fun days, and beginners’ classes. “Kabaddi: The South Asian Contact Sport Breaking Barriers in Hong Kong.” Hong Kong Free Press, December 26, 2019. https://hongkongfp.com/2019/12/26/kabaddi-south-asian-contact-sport-breaking-barriers-hong-kong/.

3 Scroll Staff. “‘Get Rid of Terrorism’: Vijay Goel Shuts Door on Pakistan Players Playing in Pro Kabaddi League.” Scroll.in, May 22, 2017. https://scroll.in/field/838384/get-rid-of-terrorism-vijay-goel-shuts-door-on-pakistan-players-playing-in-pro-kabaddi-league.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fund for Scholarly Research and Creative Work and Professional Development (Adjuncts), Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada; SSHRC Institutional Grant, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada; SSHRC Insight Development Grant 430-2020-00040.