Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men: re-racialization, class and masculinity within the neo-liberal school

Abstract

This article explores Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men’s experiences of schooling to examine what inclusion/exclusion means to them. Qualitative research was undertaken with 48 Pakistani and Bangladeshi young men living in areas of the West Midlands, England. The young men highlighted three key areas: the emergence of a schooling regime operating through neo-liberal principles, the recognition of class difference between themselves and teachers, and their awareness of how racialization operated through codes of masculinity. In conclusion, it is argued that research on issues of inclusion/exclusion should be cautious when interpreting new forms of class identity through conventional categories of ethnicity.

Keywords:

• re-racialization
• neo-liberalism
• masculinity
• Muslim
• class
• educational inclusion

Notes

1. Paddy Hillyard (2003) originally used the concept to capture the experiences of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts among the Irish diaspora in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s. More recently, Mary Hickman adopted the concept to carry out a comparative analysis of the intense state surveillance and criminalization of the Irish and Muslim communities with reference to current discourses of integration and social cohesion (Hickman et al. 2012).

2. See Popoviciu, Haywood, and Mac an Ghaill (2006) for further explanation of critical ethnography. A main focus here is to use critical theories, including feminism and post-colonial analysis, to interrogate diasporic working-class young men’s subjectivity and identity formation, with a specific focus on capturing their meanings at a time of rapid local and global change.