%0 Journal Article %A Singh, Amit %D 2022 %F discovery:10164837 %I Informa UK Limited %J Identities %K Bourdieu, habitus, race, agency, kickboxing, Muay Thai %N 3 %P 301-319 %T Fighting with race: complex solidarities & constrained sameness %U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10164837/ %V 29 %X Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted at an East London Kickboxing/Muay Thai gym, this paper explores how fighters at Origins Combat Gym seek to reject race as a discursive category in favour of constructing each other as the same, bonded by years of intimately training alongside one another. Drawing upon Bourdieu, I conceptualise a racial habitus to argue that such processes are constrained; my field-site is not a racial utopia, even if it does allow for new possibilities. Nonetheless, my interlocutors’ attempts to reject the logic of ethnic absolutism through forging complex localised solidarities offers hope in anti-immigrant times. %Z This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.