Gender and Religious Settlement: Families, hijabs and identity

Religious settlement refers to the process whereby a religion moves from one place to another and becomes incorporated into the religious economy of the new place. In this process, both the migrating religion and the society in which it settles are changed. This process, described in detail by several studies, results in an increase in religious diversity necessitating new strategies to negotiate this diversity in everyday life. Using census data to describe the general picture and in-depth interviews to provide personal detail, this paper focuses on the role of women in religious settlement and the negotiation of religious diversity. Most studies have focused on organisational features of the settlement of religious groups and the management of religious diversity resulting in a male-dominated perspective. The processes by which women negotiate religious settlement and form identities differ from those of men and are often complicated by conflicting expectations held of them by themselves, their partners, their religious organisation and the society into which they are settling.