Mobile Selves: Gender, ethnicity and mobile phones in the everyday lives of young Pakistani-British women and men

Abstract

This paper focuses on mobile phone use by a young minority ethnic group as a medium through which to explore diversity and technology use in everyday life. Recent research with young people has shown that mobile phones are instrumentally, socially and emotionally important but few have problematized the homogeneous concept of ‘youth’. This paper argues for increased recognition of the intersections of social categories such as youth, gender and ethnicity with technologies, specifically mobile phones, in order to understand complexity of use. Drawing on new empirical, qualitative data from an urban area in the North East of England we explore the focus group narratives of young Pakistani-British Muslim women and men focusing on the notion of ‘shifting’ gendered and cultural identities and social practices, developed and reworked in relation to the use of mobile phones. We look at the gendered dynamics of mobile use, including gender talk and text, and ask whether the young women and men experience mobiles differently in everyday life. We also explore the ways in which mobiles are used to create ‘space of one's own’ and the gendered dynamics of remaining connected, especially to key peer groups. The paper concludes with the assertion that in order to fully explore the mutability of youth cultures across space and time, we need to develop a more dynamic concept of ‘mobile selves’ by exploring the place and meaning of technologies such as mobile phones in the rich tapestries of young people's lives.

Keywords:

• Mobile phones
• gender
• ethnicity
• culture
• identity
• technology

Notes

1. The exchange of material gifts through digital media (Johnsen 2003).

2. One participant was an Arab-British Muslim man and was involved in the focus group through friendship with the other men.

3. In defining ‘race’ and ethnicity we espouse the view that ‘race’ has no legitimate base in science and is socially constructed (Brah 1996) although is often represented in everyday life as a fixed and objective category of identity, where definitions of ‘race’ often employ signifiers, for example, skin colour or country of origin which are mobilized to marginalize different social groups. Ethnicity, like ‘race’, signifies a process and is relational but is primarily a mechanism of ‘boundary maintenance’ between groups (Brah 1996). ‘Race’ and ethnicity are not isolated from other social categories and are continuously (re)produced with other forms of difference across social settings.

4. Male and female mobile users met in separate groups for cultural and faith reasons, a choice advised by community assistants.

5. Eid is a Muslim festival. There are two Eid festivals in the year: one to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting; and the other to celebrate the end of Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eileen Green

Eileen Greenis Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Social and Policy Research at the University of Teesside, UK. Her research interests include: gender and ICTs, health and well-being, and paid employment and leisure. Previous co-authored publications include: Virtual Gender, Routledge 2001, and Youth, Risk and Leisure, Palgrave 2004.

Carrie Singleton

Carrie Singletonis a research fellow in the Centre for Social and Policy Research at the University of Teesside. Her research interests are in gender and technology; ‘race’ and ethnicity; youth identities; and leisure. She is currently carrying out research on rural communities and ICT use.