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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2508-619X

Abstract

In Fiji, physicality and hegemonic masculinity are largely defined by rugby and the military, institutions dominated by Indigenous Fijian men, who are predominantly Christian, often marginalising other races, genders, religions, and sports. While research in the Global South has examined intersections of race and gender, little is known about how masculinity is understood across different sports, sporting icons, and contexts—particularly from the perspective of South Asian migrant women in Oceania with hybrid identities. This paper investigates how young Indo-Fijian women negotiate masculinity, identity, and agency through sport, Bollywood cinema, social media, and cultural narratives. Drawing on a year-long, multi-method participatory study in Fiji—including visual methods, poetry, and reflexive ethnography—the research employs collective non-fiction creative storytelling to amplify subaltern voices. The study reveals that young Indo-Fijian women navigate restrictive gender norms, family expectations, and racialised hierarchies in their sporting participation. Within this group, young women vary in how they perceive and negotiate ideals of Global South masculinities, which are shaped not only by culturally resonant forms of capital and their own sports participation experiences, but also by sporting icons, social media, and Bollywood representations. Using decolonial methodologies (Smith, 2012), subaltern theory (Chakravorty, 1988), and Puwar’s (2004) concept of “space invaders,” this paper foregrounds the sporting agency of young Indo-Fijian women and shows how it shapes their reimagining of sporting cultures and masculinities in the Global South.

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