Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects of the narratives of Sikh taxi drivers to explore how their driving lives offer a liminal perspective on contemporary transformations in urban spaces and masculinities in Delhi, India.

Paper long abstract:

Male taxi drivers are synonymous with metropolises. Their driving lives offer a liminal perspective on contemporary transformations in urban spaces and masculinities. The drivers are themselves low-income, rural migrants, living in abysmal conditions, but whose booths are often located on the edges of gated communities, and who transport in their taxis a variety of middle class male and female passengers through 'good' and 'bad' areas of the city. Based on an ongoing gendered ethnography of Sikh taxi drivers in Delhi, this paper reflects on their narratives - so far largely hidden from both public and scholarly view - to understand how male low-income migrant workers imagine, negotiate and claim changing spaces and identities in a metropolis, which has acquired the dubious distinction of being called the 'rape capital' of India, even as urban development plans are afoot to turn it into a 'world class city'.