Ethnicity Constructed and Reconstructed: the role of Sikh women in cultural elaboration and educational decision‐making in Britain

Abstract

The paper deals with the increased consciousness of the British Sikhs of their ethnicity as defined through their religious and cultural values—which have gone through a process of effervescence with increased settlement in Britain and especially after the army action at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. The thrust of the paper is that the construction of Sikh identities is not based on a single premise and a simple process, but that identities are formulated continuously in a process of negotiation with a number of economic and political forces that shift over time and space. In particular, the focus is on the role of Sikh women in the re‐establishment of sikh cultural and religious values, and in the elaboration of certain facets of them on the British scene, as a result of Sikh women's entry into the waged labour market and increased command over economic resources since migration. The paper explores Sikh educational beliefs which have their roots in an egalitarian religious background that exercised a considerable impact in shaping them. They do not remain static but change in response to the socio‐economic forces in which they are situated, in concert with the cultural patterns from which they emanate, and which further interact with the structural forces operative in the British economy and society.