SCARP PhD Meghna Mohandas' paper on gendered and racialised housing violence

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This article examines how socio-political constructions of rental markets create housing vulnerabilities for subaltern renters. Going beyond the typical focus on occupancy claims in slums, I study rent and racialization in Indian cities through the experiences of Northeastern migrant women living in Bengaluru. Through ethnographic research, I find that their racialization and hyper-sexualization subjects them to harassment, restrictions and intrusions perpetuated by landlords and neighbours. I argue that this phenomenon is grounded in the informal nature of rental markets, both in terms of regulatory frameworks and built form, that have produced landlord-tenant relationships grounded in existing social relations. While this benefits tenants who share social traits with landlords, marginalized populations are subjected to discriminatory rental environments. Additionally, the socio-political empowerment of hegemonic groups, as property owners and as members of dominant communities, authorizes the perpetuation of violence in housing units occupied by Northeastern migrant women. Under these circumstances, I find that they are denied a sense of dignity, safety and privacy in their everyday living spaces; this form of housing violence that occurs without the displacement of residents is what I call rental unfreedoms. Broadly, the article opens up rental living spaces as new sites of inquiry on subaltern housing subjectivities.