Beyond ‘between two cultures’: micro processes of racialised and gendered positioning of South Asian and Muslim girls in an ‘everyday’ British multicultural school context

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a case study exploring the social positioning and identities of South Asian and Muslim girls in one British inner city secondary school. The analysis is situated within the context of ‘everyday multiculturalism’, a framework which provides a lens on racialized and gendered encounters in the school context. Whilst their experiences were marked by exclusions, bullying and racialized, gendered and religious hierarchies, and typical processes of Othering, this appeared against the contradictory backdrop of the ‘warmth’ of multiculturalism and the silence of racism. Their experiences were therefore complex and signals the need to move beyond the discourse of the melodrama of South Asian girlhood, commonly depicted in dominant wider discourses in the form of ‘between two cultures’, towards a more nuanced understanding of the issues encountered in the everyday multicultural contexts of British schools marked by micro processes of racialized and gendered positioning.

KEYWORDS:

• South Asian Muslim girls
• social positioning
• ‘race’
• racism
• gender
• ‘everyday’ multiculturalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Isis refers to the Islamist militant group that ceased parts of land between Syria and Iraq.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Veena Meetoo

Veena Meetoo is a Research Officer at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education. Her research interests focus on the intersections of ‘race’, gender, migration, and minority ethnic young people, particularly for South Asian and Muslim girls, looked after children and separated child migrants.