As a second-generation British-Pakistani and Muslim woman growing up in Manchester in a predominantly white neighbourhood, I remember the deep desire to be the same as the other children I played with in my neighbourhood and at school. I was aware of the difference in my skin colour, heritage and religious background, as all the children I played with were white British Christians. The yearning to be the same stayed with me into my teenage years. Having similar interests, participating in games with the children and being part of the neighbourhood enabled me to create a feeling of belonging in spite of our differences. My faith and cultural heritage were one of many facets of my identity but, more importantly, it was shared experiences and interests that brought me closer to white British people. Meeting people from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds later, as an undergraduate at university, I came to realise that the differences I had so clearly marked were not so firm. What united me and other students was far greater than what separated us, such as our interests, aspirations and shared experiences of university life. By then I could sense that Muslim, Pakistani and British were not monolithic identities: rather there were different ways of being either or both, which people negotiated throughout their daily lives.
Reflecting on my own upbringing and experiences of being a second-generation British-Pakistani Muslim prompted me to want to understand what was happening among other socially mobile British-Pakistani women in Manchester. More importantly, and like many other people, I was puzzled by the changes regarding the more public and evident expression of religious affiliation among British-Pakistani women, a practice that I will refer to here as āvisual pietyā. Being a Muslim, it was surprising to me that in the aftermath of 9/11 in New York and the 7/7 bombings in London, many middle-class British Muslims were choosing to publicly assert their religious identity while also trying to deal with an increasing wave of Islamophobia through being seen to be good British citizens. A motivating factor for basing my research on middle-class British-Pakistanis was my wish to understand what seemed to be a tension between the practice and desire of being a good Muslim and a good British citizen simultaneously, in the current widespread context of Islamophobia.
Through my ethnographic research, I came to realise that while the need for belonging and acceptance is fundamental, the ways in which people are willing and able to belong are far more complex than I had envisaged while growing up. Acceptance (by oneself and others) and belonging (as a sense of attachment to a culture and a group of people) are both governed by the intersection of social positions and feelings that range from our status in terms of class, heritage and gender; our values and personal experiences, which we share with others; and the personal and emotional bonds we forge with people and places.
I was interested in hearing the stories of the women I interviewed in the field and what they had to share with me regarding their experiences as middle-class British-Pakistani Muslim second-generation migrants in the context of prejudice and discrimination. How did they negotiate their sense of belonging as British-Pakistani women in England? Socioeconomic advantage and familiarity with the British way of life meant that the women in my study were armed with the tools to challenge prejudice against Muslims and British-Pakistanis. They were far from being passive victims of racial, religious or cultural discrimination. Challenges such as the experience of prejudice have not stopped my participants from accomplishing success in their careers or reaching a strong standing within their circle of family and friends.
The women in my study were juggling identities, social positions and migration statuses that seemed contradictory at first, but which made perfect sense to them. This book is an ethnographic study of the identities of middle-class British-Pakistani women in Manchester, and the sense of belonging they create through recognition and social status. Class, ethnicity, nationality, generation, age, religion and gender influence the social status and recognition that the women in my study are trying to garner. They perform different and intersecting identities that have the potential for maximising their status and capital in any particular given social situation. I draw on theories of capital, the social field (Bourdieu 1984), and performance (Goffman 1959) to explore the many ways in which the women juggle with the various expectations others have of their lives and their own ability to gain power and autonomy in a highly competitive migratory social field.
The ethnographic material that forms the basis of this book enabled me to grasp the complex status that middle-class British-Pakistani women in Manchester occupy. My interlocutors inhabited a unique social place, not quite identifying with white British people and neither fully identifying with, nor claiming to belong to, Pakistan in the same way as their parentās generation. Consequently, they carved out a sense of belonging and identity that was neither white British nor Pakistani, instead creating their own understanding and expectations of what it meant to be a socially mobile British-Pakistani Muslim woman in Manchester. Being middle class and second generation meant that they were not presented with the challenges that working-class first-generation immigrants who came from the 1950s onwards faced. Their parents had to become fluent in another language and to adapt to a new culture, which in many ways was very different from the culture and values they had grown up with in Pakistan. Some of their parents had not been educated beyond secondary level, and initially struggled to improve their material position in Britain. On the other hand, the women in my study had to deal with Islamophobia as a growing global political phenomenon, and consequently the prejudice against Muslims and British-Pakistanis that has increased dramatically in their generation.
Why British-Pakistanis?
My own understanding of being a British-Pakistani, which informs my interest in the subject matter of this book, stemmed from my early experiences and the influence of my parents. My parents have always showed an interest in different faiths and cultures, and they had told me that growing up and living side by side with people of different faiths had enabled them to be open minded, yet devout. Instead of focussing on differences, they sought out similarities across diverse faiths and cultures. To me, these were very important attributes, which I value and would like to pass down to my own children. My parents were among the many South Asians who had to cope with significant changes. Firstly, they witnessed the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan, during which millions of people had to abandon their homes and communities to make the perilous journey to a new homeland. Secondly, they migrated to Britain, where they faced discrimination while adapting to a life that was deeply unfamiliar to them. These challenging experiences were a test of their resilience and fighting spirit. My parents grew up in what was known then as British India, before Partition in 1947. In his early twenties, my father moved to the U.S for a few years, then for a short time returned to Pakistan before getting married and moving to Britain in the mid-1950s with my mother. They briefly lived in Newcastle before moving to London for twelve years and then finally settled in Manchester. My parents were part of a large wave of migration from South Asia to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.
Pakistan was then a new country facing a lot of challenges, among which were the significant number of young Pakistani graduates who were moving to Britain to establish a better life for themselves. Kilic (2008: 435ā436) and others have described how, after the Second World War, there was a large wave of immigration from the Indian subcontinent to Britain, to help reconstruct the British cities and industries that had been destroyed during the war. Migrants took on the worst and lowest paid jobs to make up for the labour shortage in Britain. Members of the Commonwealth countries were considered to be citizens of the British Commonwealth and were entitled to the same legal and civic rights as those born in Britain (Kilic 2008: 435ā436). Not all were from poor backgrounds or came to fill low-paid jobs. A significant number of Pakistanis w...