%I Informa UK Limited %K Bourdieu, habitus, race, agency, kickboxing, Muay Thai %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. %O This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. %N 3 %D 2022 %V 29 %A Amit Singh %J Identities %P 301-319 %L discovery10164837 %T Fighting with race: complex solidarities & constrained sameness