Being a freshie is (not) cool: stigma,capital and disgust in British Pakistani stereotypes of new subcontinental migrants

Intra-ethnic discrimination, in the form of stereotyping of recent migrants by settled ethnic minorities, has been interpreted as internalized racism, displacing stigma and negotiation of local hierarchies of belonging. Stereotypes of ‘Fresh off the Boat’ migrants construct cultural boundaries and assertions of belonging, offering clues to processes of identity-making where ethnicity is complicated by ongoing migration. In British Pakistani portrayals of ‘freshies’, this assertion of difference coexists with familial ties and a high incidence of transnational marriage. Analysis of the figure of the ‘freshie’ in internet comedy videos, combined with qualitative research material, provides insight into dynamics of cultural and social capital, immigration and sexuality through manifestations of difference, similarity and disgust. Together these not only reveal the weakness of recent migrants’ positions in structures of socio-economic and symbolic power, but the blurring of social categories, and the continuing importance of transnational kinship in negotiations of identity amongst British Pakistanis.     

Methodological dilemmas: gatekeepers and positionality in Bradford

This paper explores the ever-evolving relationship between gatekeepers and the researcher, and the ways in which it may facilitate, constrain or transform the research process by opening and/or closing the gate. We explore the methodological issue of positionality and discuss the ways in which gatekeepers drew on different axes of the researcher's identities – religion, ethnicity, gender and age – in ambiguous and contradictory ways. In analysing this relationship, we locate the discussion within its historical context, as we contend that contextuality influenced the way gatekeepers positioned the researcher. This paper draws on the field experiences of the first author in four inner-city neighbourhoods in Bradford, West Yorkshire, a northern city with a well-established Pakistani Muslim community that has become synonymous with the Rushdie affair and the 1995 and 2001 urban disturbances.     

Journeys of difference: The use of migratory narratives among British Hindu Gujaratis

Increasing attention is being paid to the heterogeneous identity of British Asians. This article wishes to contribute to this literature by using research on British Hindu Gujaratis to highlight the type of distinct migratory histories contained in the term ‘South Asian diaspora’ and the importance these histories have in perceptions of community identity in the British context. The article will focus on how two research cohorts used migratory histories to distinguish the contemporary British Hindu Gujarati community. The article contends that histories are used selectively and have a direct relationship to the experience of the community in the British context.     

Kinship, Cultural Preference and Immigration: Consanguineous Marriage Among British Pakistanis

This article offers an analysis and interpretation of a high rate of marriage to relatives, especially first cousins, in a sample of second-generation British Pakistanis. It argues that the high rate of such marriage is not a simple reflection of a cultural preference. A better explanation requires an analysis of the factors that influence the decisions and choices of the marriage arrangers in the particular context of Pakistani migration to Britain. The article also underlines the inadequacy of a blanket category 'Pakistani' in relation to marriage patterns and choices. Variation according to region of origin, caste, socio-economic status, and upbringing must be brought into focus to reveal the processes that have generated the pattern, and to offer clues to its likely persistence.     

Diaspora identification and long-distance nationalism among Tamil migrants of diverse state origins in the UK

Accounts of Tamil long-distance nationalism have focused on Sri Lankan Tamil migrants. But the UK is also home to Tamils of non-Sri Lankan state origins. While these migrants may be nominally incorporated into a ‘Tamil diaspora’, they are seldom present in scholarly accounts. Framed by Werbner's (2002) conception of diasporas as ‘aesthetic’ and ‘moral’ communities, this article explores whether engagement with a Tamil diaspora and long-distance nationalism is expressed by Tamil migrants of diverse state origins. While migrants identify with an aesthetic community, ‘membership’ of the moral community is contested between those who hold direct experience of suffering as central to belonging, and those who imagine the boundaries of belonging more fluidly – based upon primordial understandings of essential ethnicity and a narrative of Tamil ‘victimhood’ that incorporates experiences of being Tamil in Sri Lanka, India and in other sites, despite obvious differences in these experiences.     

Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings,Relational Realignments,and Persistent Inequalities

ABSTRACT

In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual's negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner of what was then the tiny kingdom of Nepal. Gudiya's story highlights the ways in which she has engaged in relational realignments aimed at bringing her closer to the life she imagines, even as she has encountered new and persistent forms of inequality both local and transnational in scale.     

Wearing the veil: hijab,Islam and job qualifications as determinants of social attitudes towards immigrant women in Norway

Immigrant women are a particularly vulnerable part of the immigrant population. In this paper we analyse negative attitudes towards immigrant women in Norway. We focus on immigrant women’s formal job qualifications, their religious background and wearing of hijab – the headscarf sometimes used by Muslim women. Using survey-embedded experiments we are able to analyse the net effects on attitudes of job qualifications, Islamic religious background and the hijab. The results show that native population frequently has more negative views of Muslim women who wear a hijab. The negative effects of a hijab do not seem to be strongly reduced if a woman wearing it has higher education. With a single exception, the results also show that Muslim background in itself (i.e. without the hijab) does not have any strong effect on attitudes of the native population towards immigrant women.     

Movement in spaces of liminality: Chinese dance and immigrant identities

This paper explores the roles of immigrant dance in ethnic construction. It is based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with a Chinese dance organization in the US Midwest. Chinese dance in the US, a transnational cultural practice, solidifies a sense of belonging among Chinese immigrants. As these immigrants make sense of what it means to be Chinese and to do Chinese dance in contemporary American society, they reinvent their collective identity while holding on to primordial understandings of ethnicity rooted in the constructed ideas of ancestry and homeland. A case study of the ethnic construction theory, this research sheds light on the paradox of embodied immigrant identities: they are constructed through cultural practices and yet often understood as primordial, transnational and yet necessarily place-bound.     

Governing Muslims and Islam in Contemporary Germany: Race,Time, and the German Islam Conference

The construction of a swimming pool for the European personnel of one of the fifty or so colonial sugar factories still operating in Java in the mid-1930s was a symptom of the growing 'enclavement' of the Dutch colonial communities on the island during the final decades of the Netherlands India. An earlier phase of Dutch colonialism in the Indies had been characterized by hybrid, inclusivist social practices and cultural assumptions generally labelled indisch or Indo-European. By the inter-war decades of the twentieth century, totok – meaning expatriate – norms and values began to assert their hegemony at virtually all levels of colonial society. Yet ambiguity continues to surround this progress from incorporation to differentiation, as instanced by the inter-war history of the Europeans who lived in the residential compound which the pool was designed to service.     

New ethnic and national questions in Scotland: post-British identities among Glasgow Pakistani teenagers

The problematic relationship between 'Britishness' and the identities of UK ethnic minorities is further complicated in Scotland by the increasing salience of the Scottish dimension. This article discusses the relationship between reformulations of 'post-British' national identities, and the position of Scottish Pakistani-Muslims. The study focuses on the preferred identities of young Pakistani-Scots in West Central Scotland, reporting chiefly on the results of the modified Twenty Statement Test [TST] as administered to sixty-three Scottish-Pakistani teenagers aged between fourteen and seventeen years, estimated as a significant percentage of the Glasgow Pakistani population in this age range. Religious, ethnic and nationality labels are all adopted by these respondents. Where there are no constraints on their identity labels, religious (Muslim) statements predominate, and where a choice of labels is provided, dual ethnicity labels are preferred. The results are theorized in relation to present deficiencies in the acceptance of plural or 'hyphenate' identities within the United Kingdom.     

The "amazing" fertility decline: Islam, economics, and reproductive decision making among working-class Moroccan women

Often it is understood that Islam prohibits family planning because the Qur'an does not explicitly address contraception. Public health and development officials have recently congratulated the Muslim world for decreases in fertility given the supposed constraints placed on reproductive healthcare by Islam, while popular culture writers have warned the West of threats by young Muslims if the population goes uncontrolled. This article draws on data collected through interviews with working-class women seeking reproductive healthcare at clinics in Rabat, Morocco, and with medical providers to challenge the link between Islamic ideology and reproductive practices and the correlation among Islam, poverty, and fertility. Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, has experienced a dramatic decrease in fertility between the 1970s and today. I argue that patients and providers give new meanings to modern reproductive practices and produce new discourses of reproduction and motherhood that converge popular understandings of Islam with economic conditions of the Moroccan working class.     

Competition, cooperation among kin, and virulence in multiple infections

Critical determinants of the optimum level of virulence in pathogens include the presence of competitors (i.e., multiple infections), their relatedness, and the effect of competitors on pathogen growth and disease development. Empirical data regarding the existence of competitive interactions and their impact on virulence remain very limited compared to theoretical studies. Here, we followed an experimental population of the model fungal pathogen Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae on its caryophyllaceous host Silene latifolia. Our analysis revealed conditional responses by the pathogen to the presence of competitors, which was dependent upon the relatedness of pathogens within hosts. Overall, virulence was increased in cases of multiple infections as compared to single infections: both spore production and degree of plant sterilization were higher under multiple infections. The pathogen indeed increased its growth and reproductive rate when competitors were present within the same plant. Microbotryum also appeared able to interfere with competitors, reducing their ability to colonize the host, and this effect was smaller between closer relatives. Our results thus help to elucidate the myriad of theoretical considerations on the evolution of virulence by providing experimental results with a well-studied disease of wild plant populations.     

The East Indian Diaspora in Costa Rica: Inbreeding Avoidance, Marriage Patterns, and Cultural Survival

Anthropologists have long been interested in the survival of Indian cultural traits in the New World. In this article, we present results of an ongoing project with a Costa Rican community that descends from East Indian indentured servants. We focus on the group's marriage patterns and how these patterns might have helped keep the community as a cohesive ethnic group. We investigate the group's level of inbreeding by computing the inbreeding coefficient using two different methods. We show that the community has been successful at keeping its inbreeding low, despite its small size, by allowing marriage with nonmembers of the community. We propose that unless consanguineous marriages are allowed virtually all of the community's marriages will be with noncommunity members. Absorption into tourism, as well as the community's staunch avoidance of consanguineous marriages and virtually universal marriage with noncommunity members, will likely contribute to their disappearance as a viable ethnic group.     

Introduction: gender,migration and the media

Abstract

Mediated representations of gender, ethnicity and migration play an increasingly important role in the way these categories are understood in the public sphere and the private realm. As media often intervene in processes of individual and institutional communication, they provide frameworks for the production and consumption of representations of these categories. Thus media – in their production, representations and consumption – need to be analysed, not only as reflections as pre-existing socio-political realities, but also as constitutive elements in the production of meanings of the self and the Other. This special issue includes a number of articles that examine the articulations of gendered ethnic identities and of gendered citizenship as these are shaped in media production, media representations and media consumption.     

Hierarchy,kinship and social interaction among Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata)

The study reports the relationship between hierarchy, genetic relatedness and social interaction in captive Japanese macaques. Grooming and proximity were found to be positively related to both dominance rank and degrees of relatedness. Ranks also positively correlated with threats while no relationship was observed between genetic relationships and agonistic interactions. The removal of a-male tightened the male hierarchy while the female hierarchy became relatively loose. Affiliative behaviour became more correlated with ranks than degrees of genetic relatedness. In the absence of α-male, the next dominant male avoided involvement in either agonistic or afliliative interactions with reintroduced animals and group females.     

Racialization and religion: race,culture and difference in the study of antisemitism and Islamophobia

Abstract

It is striking to observe the virtual absence of an established literature on race and racism in the discussion of Islamophobia; something that is only marginally more present in the discussion of antisemitism. This special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies locates the contemporary study of antisemitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields of race and racism. As such it problematizes the extent to which discussion of the racialization of these minorities remains unrelated to each other, or is explored in distinct silos as a series of internal debates. By harnessing the explanatory power of long-established organizing concepts within the study of race and racism, this special issue makes a historically informed, theoretical and empirical contribution to aligning these analytical pursuits.     

Barí exogamy among their territorial groups: Choice and/or necessity

Considerable demographic data on the Barí were provided by the 1982 Venezuelan Indian census. Some of these data are presented here and used to test the hypothesis, suggested by the Barí themselves, that territorial exogamy was caused largely by a shortage of marriageable women within the territorial group. The hypothesis is disconfirmed, but new insights into the causes of territorial exogamy emerge from the analysis.     

Reproduction as spiritual kin work: Orthodoxy, ivf, and the moral economy of motherhood in greece

Bringing gender and kinship studies together with an anthropology of religion, in this article I demonstrate how urban Greek couples and clinical practitioners in the middle 1990s proceeded with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the absence of government regulations, and did so with reference to cultural beliefs and social relations consistent with Greek Orthodox religious practice. Drawing on ethnographic observations at an Athens IVF clinic as well as on interviews with former patients, I argue that Athenian women, in particular, engage IVF as a kind of spiritual kin work, normalizing the use of medical techniques with reference to ideologies of motherhood that treat it as a woman’s moral achievement and as a source of womanly suffering. Since the period of ethnographic research described here, and despite disapproval of the Greek Orthodox Church, legislation regulating the use of IVF and other methods of medically assisted reproduction has become law. This article reconciles how the Church can officially reject medically assisted means of reproduction that Athenian users have normalized with reference to spiritual beliefs and practices.