Kaam: Youth, religiosity, and the cultural production of work in a North Indian Madrasa

Drawing from year-long ethnographic fieldwork in a North Indian Madrasa, this paper looks at how young Madrasa students are navigating socio-economic precarity in their everyday lives. I primarily focus on young people’s navigation of neoliberal and Hindu Nationalist discourses surrounding work and employment. In doing so, I draw on the recent turn in critical work geographies by de-emphasising a wage-centric approach to studying practices of work. At the same time, I show how work is locally constructed and mobilised in relation to a variety of social and cultural resources by focusing on young people’s articulation of work through the Hindustani word kaam .