Young Indo-Fijian Women Breaking Barriers in Fijian Sporting Spaces An Arts-Based Approach

This book explores the gendered and racial lived everyday and sporting experiences of Brown migrant young women and girls in Fiji. The author empirically employs a novel visual and arts-based research methodology (ABRM) and arts-based method (ABM) to collect and present the data. Carefully woven non-fiction creative pieces sourced from semi-structured interviews and reflexive ethnographic observations from fieldwork bring to the forefront the voices of Indo-Fijian women and girls. Using an intersectional approach from Gayatri Spivak to Nirmal Puwar, Raewyn Connell and Judith Butler, the author illuminates the triple layer of the marginalities Indo-Fijian women and girls experience in the sporting arena within a settler-colonial context. The book shows the agency of young athletic Indo-Fijian women and how they collectively challenge hegemonic masculinities in sports. This highly timely and original book therefore contributes qualitative intersectional research to the growing body on literature of sporty women of colour in the Global South. It thus appeals to scholars and students of sociology of sports, race and ethnicity, diaspora studies, gender studies, anthropology, as well as the history of Oceania and South Asia.

Chapter 1: An overview of the book and methodological design.- Chapter 2 – Gender, race and class: lived experiences of young sporty South Asian women in the Global South diaspora.- Chapter 3 – Intersectional oppression of young Indo-Fijian women: cultural, spatial, and social dimensions.- Chapter 4 – Reinforcing gender traditions: Fijian teachers’ impact on Indo-Fijian girls’ sports.- Chapter 5 - From girmit to game: Indo-Fijian women challenging boundaries in Fijian physical and sporting culture.- Chapter 6 - Conclusion: Intersectional Insights into the Sporting Lives of Young Indo-Fijian Women.

Rohini Balram is an arts-based researcher and sports sociologist with a PhD from Western Sydney University, Australia. She is also a fitness and wellbeing trainer who volunteers to support the sporting, physical activity, and leisure pursuits of migrant women from South and West Asia in Western Sydney, using culturally appropriate interventions. In addition to her academic, professional, and volunteer work, Rohini uses her Global South voice as an Indo-Fijian-Australian sporty woman living in diaspora when writing creative fiction and poetry.