Language, religion, and workplace discrimination: intersectional microaggressions in India

ABSTRACT

Microaggression has recently gained prominence. It is a psychological construct that examines everyday slights experienced by marginalized groups. While much of the research has stemmed from the United States and has focused on race, gender, and sexuality, very few studies have investigated ways in which complex and overlapping identities involving language, religion, and caste/class intersect in cross-cultural workplace settings in the Global South. This study fills this gap by exploring a minoritized group carrying a ‘double discrimination’ burden due to their religion and socio-economic historical class background. It examines in what ways, if any, Indian Meos experience microaggressions in cross-cultural workplace settings. In doing so, it extends research that remains understudied. One of the criticisms against microaggression studies is their reliance on self-reporting and recall of past instances, thus lacking validity. This paper proposes conversation analysis as a useful approach offering an empirically grounded analysis of microaggression in action.

KEYWORDS:

• Microaggression
• language
• Muslims
• intersectionality
• diversity
• discrimination

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Data is not publicly available due to the confidentiality agreement with the participants

Notes

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2. Pierce, ‘Offensive Mechanisms’.

3. Sue, ‘Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation’, 5.

4. Ibid.

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7. Thomas and Skowronski, 2020, ‘The study of microaggressive behavior: Reflections on the construct, construct-relevant research, and possible future research’, 56.

8. Bakshi, “’It is a dialect, not a language!’ – Investigating teachers’ beliefs about Mewati”; Bakshi, ‘Are teachers boundedly rational? How beliefs and context affect decision-making’.

9. Sue, ‘Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation’, 5

10. Ibid., 6.

11. Campbell and Manning, ‘The rise of victimhood culture’; Haidt, ‘The Unwisest Idea on Campus: Commentary on Lilienfeld’; Lilienfeld, ‘Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence’; Thomas, ‘Macrononsense in Multiculturalism’.

12. Lilienfeld, ‘Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence’; Thomas, ‘Macrononsense in Multiculturalism’.

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27. Idib, 2.

28. Kumar, ‘The Saints Belong to Everyone’: Liminality, Belief and Practices in Rural North India, 17.

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30. Mayaram, ‘Speech, silence and the making of partition violence in Mewat’, 143.

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32. Mayaram, ‘Speech, silence and the making of partition violence in Mewat’, 139.

33. Ibid, 129.

34. Pandey, Remembering partition: Violence, nationalism and history in India, 39

35. Ibid.

36. Metcalf, ‘Shail Mayaram, Resisting regimes: Myth, memory and the shaping of a Muslim identity’, 1283.

37. Copland, ‘The further shores of partition: Ethnic cleansing in Rajasthan 1947’, 218; Copland, ‘Islam and the “moral economy”: The Alwar revolt of 1932’, 125; Mayaram, ‘Speech, silence and the making of partition violence in Mewat’, 137; Moses, ‘Partitions and the sisyphean making of peoples’, 44; Pandey, Remembering partition: Violence, nationalism and history in India, 39; Sharma and Vanjani, ‘Remembrances of things past: Partition experiences of Punjabi villagers in Rajasthan’, 1731

38. Mayaram, ‘Speech, silence and the making of partition violence in Mewat’, 161.

39. Kumar, ‘The Saints Belong to Everyone’: Liminality, Belief and Practices in Rural North India, 47; Mayaram, ‘Hindu and Islamic Transnational Religious Movements’, 81.

40. Kumar, “The Art of Resistance: The Bards and Minstrels’ Response to Anti-Syncretism/Anti-liminality in north India”, 230.

41. Bharadwaj, ‘Migration, Mobility and Memories: Meos in the Processes of Peasantisation and Islamisation in Medieval Period’, 247.

42. Ibid.

43. Kumar, “The Art of Resistance: The Bards and Minstrels’ Response to Anti-Syncretism/Anti-liminality in north India”, 230–231

44. Nadal et al., ‘Subtle and overt forms of Islamophobia: Microaggressions toward Muslim Americans’, 18.

45. Bakshi, “’It is a dialect, not a language!’ – Investigating teachers’ beliefs about Mewati”; Bakshi, ‘Are teachers boundedly rational? How beliefs and context affect decision-making’.

46. Morse, ‘Data were saturated’.

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49. Gibbs, ‘Focus Groups’.

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53. Ibid.

54. Cited in Hennink, Focus group discussions: Understanding qualitative research, 2

55. Merriam, Qualitative research and case study applications in education, 7

56. Bakshi, “’It is a dialect, not a language!’ – Investigating teachers’ beliefs about Mewati”; Bakshi, ‘Are teachers boundedly rational? How beliefs and context affect decision-making’.

57. Morgan, ‘Focus Groups’.

58. Hennink, Focus group discussions: Understanding qualitative research

59. Gibbs, ‘Focus Groups’.

60. Montell, ‘Focus group interviews: A new feminist method’, 49.

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62. Gibbs, ‘Focus Groups’, 2.

63. Cowie et al., ‘Measuring workplace bullying’, 43.

64. Gorman and Clayton, Qualitative research for the information professional: A practical handbook, 49

65. Plaut, Landis, and Trevor, ‘Focus groups and community mobilization: A case study from rural North Carolina’, 216.

66. Myers, ‘“Where are you from?”: Identifying place 1’, 321.

67. Wilkes and Speer, “Reporting Microaggressions: Kinship Carers’ Complaints about Identity Slights”, 319.

68. Sue et al., ‘Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice’.

69. Lincoln and Guba, Naturalistic inquiry

70. Sue et al., ‘Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice’.

71. Shim, ‘Self-identified Linguistic Microaggressions among Monolingual Pre-service Teachers: Why They Matter for English Language Learners’

72. Sue et al., ‘Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice’.

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74. Nadal et al., ‘Religious microaggressions in the United States: Mental health implications for religious minority groups’; Nadal et al., ‘Subtle and overt forms of Islamophobia: Microaggressions toward Muslim Americans’.

75. Matthews, ‘Urdu Language and Education in India’, 62.

76. Hasnain, ‘Urdu linguistic minorities and education’, 4.

77. Brass, Language, religion and politics in North India, 215

78. Chandra, The Oppressive Present: literature and social consciousness in colonial India

79. Nadal et al., ‘Subtle and overt forms of Islamophobia: Microaggressions toward Muslim Americans’.

80. Platt and Lenzen, ‘Sexual orientation microaggressions and the experience of sexual minorities’, 1025.

81. Ibid.

82. Mulvey, Palmer, and Abrams, ‘Race-based humor and peer group dynamics in adolescence: Bystander intervention and social exclusion’, 1380.

83. Nadal et al., ‘Religious microaggressions in the United States: Mental health implications for religious minority groups’; Nadal et al., ‘Subtle and overt forms of Islamophobia: Microaggressions toward Muslim Americans’.

84. Sue, Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation, 20

85. ‘25 years since the demolition of Babri Masjid: A timeline of the Ayodhya dispute’.

86. Nadal et al., ‘Religious microaggressions in the United States: Mental health implications for religious minority groups’.

87. Alam, ‘Social exclusion of Muslims in India and deficient debates about affirmative action: Suggestions for a new approach’, 61.

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91. Abraham and Rao, ‘84% dead in cow-related violence since 2010 are Muslim; 97% attacks after 2014’.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prerna Bakshi

Prerna Bakshi is a Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen). Before joining CUHK-Shenzhen, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Education University of Hong Kong. She completed her Master of Arts (Research) in Linguistics from the University of Sydney. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of New England (Australia) for which she was awarded a Research Training Program Scholarship offered to candidates with exceptional research potential. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, Leadership and Policy in Schools, Language in India, and Journal of Language, Identity & Education.