Identity and Upbringing in South Asian Muslim Families

Insights from Young People and their Parents in Britain

Michela Franceschelli

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781137531698
• eBook ISBN: 9781137531704
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Marriage & Family Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What is it like to grow up as a South Asian British Muslim today? What are the experiences of South Asian Muslim parents bringing up their children in contemporary Britain? Identity and Upbringing in South Asian Muslim Families explores these questions within the context of the series of events which, from 9/11 to the recent upsurge of the Islamic State, have affected the perceptions and the identity of Muslims around the world. Franceschelli reveals the complex range of negotiations behind the coming of age of South Asian Muslim teenagers and reflects on the changes and continuities between their life experiences, priorities and aspirations compared to their parents' generation. Based on primary research with South Asian Muslim young people and parents, this book highlights the importance of Islam to upbringing; the shifting value of South Asian cultural norms in Britain; and the persistent influence of class in shaping inequalities amongst families and on young people's experiences of growing up.

© The Author(s) 2016

Michela FranceschelliIdentity and Upbringing in South Asian Muslim Families10.1057/978-1-137-53170-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Michela Franceschelli¹

(1)

UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

End Abstract

1.1 Identity and Upbringing in Multicultural Britain

• Identity, there is so many ways you could define identity. It is quite a complex question. It’s like where you are from, what is your favourite thing. I can just say that I am a twin, that’s my identity or that I’m British, that’s my identity. […] Could say I am Muslim, I call myself a liberal Muslim or your race you could say you are Asian, there is so much you could define yourself by. (Mariam,¹ 17-year-old, British Bangladeshi)²
• Family is the biggest influence on who you are and the person you’ll be and your identity as a person. Friends can support to a limit but your family can support you all the way. You always need your family. (Saleem, 18-year-old, British Pakistani)

1.1.1 Exploring Parenting and Growing Up

This book has a twofold focus in exploring both identity and practices of upbringing in South Asian (those with Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian ethnic backgrounds) Muslim families in Britain. It looks at the everyday lives, relationships, values, beliefs and aspirations of South Asian Muslim teenagers who were mostly born in the UK, and of their parents, who instead grew up and became adults elsewhere—either in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan.

I first met Fatiha during the rush hour. I went to pick her up at her office in a busy street in Inner London and, while carrying several shopping bags, walking toward her flat, she started telling me her story. Fatiha was a 41-year-old Bangladeshi woman, who arrived in the UK when she was only 11 years old. Although at the time she arrived she knew no English, she was able to catch up quickly and did well in her GCSEs and O Levels³:

I did five GCSEs and two O Levels, Bengali and Chemistry and I got good grades. I was the second person to get a B in Chemistry out of all my year and I got a B in Bengali as well.

As a child, she dreamed of becoming a pharmacist, but when she turned 18, her father found her a husband. She genuinely liked the man—she said—and so they got married and she quit studying. Her coming of age happened quickly and quite smoothly, until she had her first child, Mo, who marked a turning point. Even though she had missed out on her education, Fatiha managed to find work soon after Mo was born. She began working as an interpreter from Bengali to English, initially for different charities, social services and local authorities. Once she had established herself as an interpreter, she progressed and, at the time of the interview, she had a ‘proper’ full-time position with the local council. This was still very much an unusual path in her community, where women of her generation are still less still likely to work than men, particularly if they have children: ‘We needed the money and I wanted to contribute; it’s my family too,’ she told me. During the walk, she explained something about the person she was and her dual sense of belonging and identity. Moving to Britain as a child and growing up in Inner London involved a different personal journey compared to other Bangladeshi women of the same generation, who often arrived in the UK as adults to get married:

I came here when I was little so my understanding mostly was this way of thinking in this country: the Western way of thinking, but with an ‘Islamic perspective’ if you know what I mean.

As a mother of three—two boys and one girl—Fatiha explained that the meaning of motherhood was about passing on a ‘British way of thinking’ that was entangled with ‘Islamic perspectives,’ such as religious views and values. Hence, being ‘independent, ambitious, work-focused, [and] successful’ and believing in social mobility enhanced by education—she said—must come together with Islam and the boundaries of behaviour that religion sets out. By embracing this principle, she was able to act as a role model for her children, turning the quite challenging task of negotiating different priorities and ways of life into actual practices to follow:

So as a parent I have to maintain the value of Islam for myself and if the children see that in me then it is easier for them to do it for themselves.

Being a ‘practising Muslim working mother’ was her way to bring together her ‘Islamic perspectives’ with her British identity.

Fatiha’s husband, Sakib, was a bit older than her. What he had to tell me about fatherhood and what being a father involved was also a reflection of his personal history. Unlike Fatiha, Sakib grew up in Bangladesh and moved to the UK as a young man in his early twenties. He said ‘working hard,’ was all he did from the first day of his arrival in England. While laughing, he told me that the only day he could remember having off work was the day he got married: ‘And even that was hard work!’ Since that day, and particularly after Mo was born, the pressure on him to provide for the family grew even higher and there was no time for anything other than ‘work, work, work’. He worked in a mill and then in a factory for several years. He was made redundant and drove taxis in the night while helping in a Bengali restaurant during the day. Now, he was finally running his own business, he told me very proudly. Money was still tight and the competition was high but he was hopeful. ‘This is why my English is so bad’, as he had never had the time to study, he explained. He admitted that at times things had been really hard, but he said that he had no regrets and was happy with how life had turned out for him:

I can look [at] a better future through my children’s eyes. So my work has [been] of some use. I’m happy as a father.

Sakina, the daughter of Sakib and Fatiha, was a bubbly and chatty young woman whose ambition was to become a medical doctor. She was very determined and, at 18, she had already received an offer from one of the best medical universities in the UK. At the time I spoke to her, she was in the middle of her A Levels, but she appeared both confident and carefree, and I realised she did not mind interrupting her revision and spending time talking to me. It was evident that she fully took on board her mother’s message about negotiating ‘British thinking’—she described her determination to do well in her career—with her faith in Islam. Sakina believed in God, prayed as many times as she could—most often five times a day, as Islam sets out—and, like her mother Fatiha, she wore the hijab.⁴ Like her mother, she also strongly believed in the primacy of motherhood for women, which she did not see as clashing with her future career as a doctor. She said that negotiating family and work were challenges for any parent, not just for Muslim women. I asked how she felt about growing up in London at this specific time:

I think personally this country has been the best European country to be a Muslim in really, because I can practice my religion completely freely. In London, I don’t know, I’ve never had any issue because everything has been so accommodating for me […] like in terms of what I wanted to do.

Sakina’s interview ended on this positive note. The feelings and experiences of Sakina and her parents are not representative of the rest of South Asian Muslims in Britain and they do not speak on behalf of the rest of their ethnic-religious community in Inner London. Yet, the interviews with Sakina’s family highlight some of the important issues that I want to address in this book: what is it like to grow up as a British Muslim today? What is it like to bring up children in Britain as a Muslim parent? This book is about South Asian Muslim teenagers and their parents. It looks at the influence that parents have on the development of their children’s identity and on the young people’s experiences of growing up today as British, as Muslim, as South Asian, as boys or girls, and in families from working-class or middle-class backgrounds. In order to do so, I have drawn from more than 50 in-depth interviews⁵ that I conducted with South Asian Muslim teenagers (aged 14–19 years) and their parents (aged from 40s to mid-50s) in different regions of England, as well as from more than 500 questionnaires that I distributed in three secondary schools in London and one college in North West England.

This chapter sets out the background to the book; it outlines the main theoretical influences, underlying debates, the aims and questions addressed by the research, and the methods employed for the collection and analysis of the data. The following chapters will report the findings from the research.

1.2 Questions of Our Times

Micro issues of identity, family and upbringing are informed by what happens in society at the macro level. With international migration changing the ethnic and religious composition of contemporary societies, questions about how to deal with increasing diversity are on the rise, with religious diversity increasingly central to the debate. Theories that focus on social change and diversity have pointed to different trends, such as individualisation of religion, secularization or post-secularism (Rosati 2015).

The events of the last decade, from September 11th (2001), the London bombings (2005), the terrorist attacks in Madrid (2004) to, most recently, Charlie Hebdo and the attacks in Paris (2015), have accentuated a growing international narrative about the end of multiculturalism as a political system that is able to bring together groups from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. During a speech at the Christian Union Democratic Party, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, summed up widespread feelings in many European and Western countries. ‘Of course the tendency has been to say, “let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other”. But this concept has failed, and failed utterly’ (Connolly 2010).

Multiculturalism is a highly complex, multifaceted term that attempts to answer a crucial question about contemporary societies, namely: how can equality be maintained together with a respect for diversity (Modood 2006, 2007; Modood et al. 2006; Parekh 2000)? From a sociological perspective, multiculturalism is a type of society that acknowledges the existence of groups with different senses of identity, cultural references and lifestyles. Religion is central to these debates. If contemporary Western societies are becoming increasingly secular as some have theorised (Norris and Inglehart 2004), the question of multiculturalism becomes not only the one of how multiple religions fit together, but also how they all fit within secularism (Rosati 2015). Multiculturalism is also perceived as the political response to migration and the related increasing diversity of society. In his report about the future of multiethnic Britain for the Runnymede Trust,⁶ Bhikhu Parekh (2000) set out the mission and the vision of multicultural policy in Britain as the political accommodation of group identities, which challenges exclusionary racisms (Modood 2010):

If Britain is to be a successful community of communities it will need to combine the values of equality and diversity (Parekh 2000: 105).

Parekh’s answer to the difference/unity dilemma afflicting multicultural societies is the promotion of policy that supports and cultivates a common sense of belonging, which is willing to respect and value deep cultural differences. Inclusion into a political community is understood not in terms of accepting the rule of the majority, but rather as the opening of an ‘on-going dialogue where the terms of politics are no longer fixed in advance but the result of multiple negotiations’ (Wieviorka 2007: 40).

The 2001 riots that broke out in Oldham and Bradford, UK, acted as a warning to the British government. Multicultura...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Constructing a British Muslim Identity
• 3. ‘Being Modern and Modest’: Identity and Negotiations
• 4. Love Relationships and Marriage: Agency, Islam and Culture
• 5. Islamic Capital: Islam, Social Class and Upbringing
• 6. ‘Because Education Is Everything’: Capacity to Aspire and Inequality
• 7. Conclusion: Continuity, Change and Intergenerational Difference
• Backmatter