Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher

The Religification of Pakistani-American Youth:

This article describes a cultural production process called religification, in which religious affiliation, rather than race or ethnicity, has become the core category of identity for working-class Pakistani-American youth in the United States. In this dialectical process, triggered by political changes following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Muslim identity is both thrust upon Pakistani-American youth by those who question their citizenship and embraced by the youth themselves. Specifically, the article examines the ways in which schools are sites where citizenship is both constructed and contested and the roles that peers, school personnel, families, and the youth themselves play in this construction/contestation of citizenship.

‘Narrow-minded and oppressive’ or a ‘superior culture’? Implications of divergent representations of Islam for Pakistani-American youth

Drawing on ethnographic data, this article examines the complex terrain that working-class Pakistani-American youth must negotiate in their daily lives. Specifically, the article illustrates how particular views of Islam and Americanization manifest in particular sites and within educational discourses, and the resulting dissonance that youth experience. On the one hand, schools view Islam as oppressive, problematic and a hindrance to the youths’ academic and professional success. On the other hand, families present Islam as a type of cultural capital that can guide youth and help them navigate their lives by being a ‘good Muslim.’ The result of these fossilized views of culture and nationality is the production of an ‘imagined nostalgia’: One group longs for a world where assimilation into the dominant group is expected and accepted; the other longs for the homeland, which they try to recreate in their new home. Thus, in their own ways, both schools and communities send the message that being Muslim and being American is not compatible. Consequently, rather than view being Muslim and American in an additive way, youth believe that they can only be one or the other, which often translates into placing themselves outside the realm of American cultural citizenship.

Writing culture; inscribing lives: a reflective treatise on the burden of representation in native research

This paper complicates the contested assumptions surrounding native research by exploring the burden of representation placed on native researchers because they are seen as insiders. This particular issue of representation is important for native researchers to consider, especially in instances where the research is on an understudied or politically charged group, because of the ways in which the socio-political climate influences both the telling and the reading of such research. Drawing on the author’s personal struggles as a Pakistani researcher conducting ethnographic research with Pakistani immigrants in the United States in the post-9/11 climate, this paper explores and critiques the role of the native researcher and the issues involved with representing understudied groups. Specifically, the paper focuses on authenticity, positionality, audience, and accountability. Thus, the paper is a call for researchers to be more reflective and to think more deeply about their positionality and its impact on the various constituents as they research and write. To encourage such reflexivity, the article provides a set of questions for researchers to consider at different stages of the research and writing process.

Citizenship and Belonging in an Age of Insecurity

Much like the Iran hostage crisis of the late 1970s and the Rushdie affair of the late 1980s, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are a flashpoint for a particular generation, once again bringing Muslims into the limelight and reifying the position of Muslims as the Other. In tandem with increasing xenophobia across the United States (Vlopp 2002; Yuval-Davis, Anthias, and Kofman 2005), the events of September 11 have resulted in a resurgence of patriotism within the United States (Abowitz and Harnish 2006). Exacerbated, perhaps, by the war in Iraq and media attention to al Qaeda, Muslim immigrant youth are increasingly constructed as “national outsiders” and “enemies to the nation” (Yuval-Davis, Anthias, and Kofman 2005; Abu el-Haj 2007, 30). While there has been some popular press regarding the effects of September 11 on Pakistani/Muslim communities in the United States, until very recently, the ramifications of this event and subsequent developments on students in public schools have not been adequately explored (Abu el-Haj 2002, 2007; Maira 2004; Sarroub 2005, Sirin and Fine 2008). Yet what happens within the four walls of a school is a vital part of the larger picture of changing social relations: Public spheres such as schools often reflect and shape the relationships and tensions that exist in society at large.