Talking traditions of marriage — Negotiating young British Bangladeshi femininities

‘This is jist my life noo’: Marriage, children and choice in a Scottish fishing community

“…In these ways, the outcome is in effect a 'hybrid identity' that combines competing elements. In her study of Asian arranged marriage practices, Pichler (2007) noted that the young Asian women constructed versions of themselves in contrast to a potentially problematic cultural representation of Asian girls as 'passive and shy victims of cultural practices'. To accomplish this, they produced descriptions of themselves that drew upon a range of claims about gender, nationality, educational status and so on in their talk.…”

“…It is interesting to note the ways in which such identities are made out. For the young women in Pichler's (2007) study, nationalities of being British and being Bangladeshi made available categories in terms of which the women could take up or resist membership, according to the claims that they were making in the local contexts of their discussions. Here, the women of Fisherton do not draw upon categorizations of nationality but rather of occupation and marital status.…”

“…Notwithstanding such complexity, discursive researchers have explored a range of social elements in which gender can be seen to come into view. One particular study of note here is Pichler's (2007) discussion of Asian arranged marriage practices. Pichler notes that the young Asian women who were her research participants utilize a variety of discursive and cultural resources to negotiate views and norms about marital relationships.…”

“…In particular, here we wish to examine the utility and scope of the notion that women might draw in a hybrid fashion upon ostensibly competing forms of talk. However, whereas Pichler's (2007) interest was in understanding how identity talk might reflect participants' concerns about combining two different sets of cultural understandings, our interest here is with the arguably more prevalent case of women who view themselves and their lives as located within a recognizably singular culture. To pursue this theme, the present article focuses on how women accomplish gender identities within a particular context.…”

‘Liminal learners’ in a global city: The aspirations of young British Bangladeshi women at an east London secondary school

“…The strong emphasis of these earlier studies on issues of race and religion has, however, been challenged by feminist researchers (e.g. Archer, 2002;Pichler, 2007), who draw attention to the impact on young British Asian women of the intersection of different kinds of inequality including gender, poverty and social class. More recent studies have explored young women's agency and their capacity for 'cultural resistance' (Shain, 2003:54), emphasising how second-and third-generation young British Asian women play an active role in the process of negotiating 'hybrid' identities (Hussain, 2005:11).…”