British Asian Muslim Women in South Asia

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which British Asian Muslim women experience questions of belonging in their parents’ homeland as well as Britain. I examine these issues by focusing on their narratives of their visits to their parents’ homeland which ranged from two to eight weeks. The young women’s accounts show that they exhibited cosmopolitan traits such as those of openness, flexibility and appreciation of cultures and lifestyles that they found different from their own. They also displayed signs of belonging when they visited South Asian nations largely because of familial connections and reunifications but at the same time expressed signs of belonging in Britain because of their experience of greater independence. Furthermore, the women’s reflections varied from person to person where some of them felt a deeper sense of connection to the families’ homeland than others.