This article is based on fieldwork conducted during the 1980s in a community of Hakka
Chinese who had found a profitable niche in Kolkata's leather industry. It
examines the way Kolkata's ethnic economy, in which different caste,
language and religious groups each inhabit different economic niches, furthered the
Hakka's continued identification of themselves as ‘guest
people’. The Hakka distinguished between themselves and a variety of
others, not only other Indian groups, but also the Cantonese and Hubeinese
Chinese.
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