Michela Franceschelli

‘Islamic Capital’ and Family Life: The Role of Islam in Parenting

Much sociological research using Bourdieu’s theory to analyse intergenerational reproduction tends to focus on the educational rather than the familial aspect of this process. Instead, this article explores habitus and the family field within South Asian Muslim communities in the UK as the site of intergenerational transmission and seeks to understand how these parents pass on values to their children. Based on 52 semi-structured interviews with 15 South Asian Muslim families, the findings suggest that Islam was mobilised by parents to inform the transmission of a sense of morality, support children’s education and reinforce family ties. The concept of ‘Islamic capital’ was developed to add specificity to Bourdieu’s ideas of family spirit and cultural capital in order to capture the dynamics between parents and their children. In the context of multicultural Britain, these findings shed light on the diversity of parenting to inform family support grounded in the understanding of different communities.

‘Being modern and modest’: South Asian young British Muslims negotiating multiple influences on their identity:

With the rise of multiculturalism in Britain the visibility of religion, in particularly Islam, has increased. A growing religious diversity has created new contexts and affected young people’s identity and transitions to adulthood. This article applies and extends Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and social fields to a new area: the study of how South Asian young Muslims living in England negotiate between the Muslim and British aspects of their identity. The set of individual dispositions (habitus), which originates in the family field under the influence of South Asian cultures and Islam, changes when it comes into contact with non-Islamic fields. As with the concept of habitus, identity involves reconciling individual dispositions and structural conditions. Based on qualitative insights emerging from 25 semi-structured interviews with young South Asian Muslims, the article presents different strategies of identity negotiations exemplifying the constant and complex interplay between individual agency and the social world.

‘A fish out of water?’ The therapeutic narratives of class change

Young people from working class backgrounds remained mostly excluded from the widening educational participation which characterised postwar Britain. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews which were part of a wider study about ‘Social Participation and Identity’ (2008–2009), this article explores the unusual learning trajectories of a group of working class adults born in 1958, who participated in higher education (HE) in a context where most people from the same socio-economic backgrounds did not. Drawing on Bourdieu’s social theory, the findings suggest that different types of retrospective accounts were mobilised to reconcile working class habitus of origin and the perceived habitus as adults. Most research on working class and higher education focuses on the experiences of youth. By contrast, the use of retrospective accounts of adults has enabled the study to capture the implications that the educational trajectories have later in life. The authors consider these accounts a part of wider narratives that they define ‘therapeutic’. Therapeutic narratives were employed to come to terms with the ambivalence produced by social mobility. Therefore, respondents were negotiating the sense of exclusion attached to class change, and the acknowledgement of the opportunities associated with a working class habitus accessing new social fields viaeducation.

Identity and Upbringing in South Asian Muslim Families

What is it like to grow up as a South Asian British Muslim today? What are the experiences of South Asian Muslim parents bringing up their children in contemporary Britain? Identity and Upbringing in south Asian Muslim Families explores these questions within the context of the series of events which, from 9/11 to the recent upsurge of the Islamic State, have affected the perceptions and the identity of Muslims around the world. Franceschelli reveals the complex range of negotiations behind the coming of age of South Asian Muslim teenagers and reflects on the changes and continuities between their life experiences, priorities and aspirations compared to their parents’ generation. Based on primary research with South Asian Muslim young people and parents, this book highlights the importance of Islam to upbringing; the shifting value of South Asian cultural norms in Britain; and the persistent influence of class in shaping inequalities amongst families and on young people’s experiences of growing up.

Imagining the Future in the Neoliberal Era: Young People’s Optimism and Their Faith in Hard Work

In the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crisis, the future of young people is often presented in a negative light. Despite the recent difficult circumstances, our mixed-method study found that young people in Britain were still optimistic about their personal future. In this article, we explore the tension between this optimism and the (often less positive) actual circumstances of young people. Our findings suggest that young people’s views of the future were shaped by their deep-seated faith in the transformative power of hard work. We shall argue that this faith results from young people’s psychological adjustments to neoliberal beliefs about the potential of human agency to forge the future, with implications for views of others and society more generally.

‘Because Education Is Everything’: Capacity to Aspire and Inequality

Zahida’s parents, Umara and Sameer, reflect widely shared views and feelings amongst the families. During the interview, I asked parents what sorts of things were most important to them in bringing up their children and I asked young people to reflect on what they thought their parents’ priorities were for bringing up children. Education came first for all of the respondents: some spoke about education together with other priorities, but overall all parents and young people made references to the importance of education spontaneously without need for probing or prompting. Is this a surprise? Rather than just a focus on education, the novelty stayed in the intersection of factors underlying the families’ educational aspirations, including the migration history of parents, the influences of Islam, South Asian cultures and social class.

Islamic Capital: Islam, Social Class and Upbringing

The influence of class on upbringing has been explored in depth by Lareau (2002, 2011) who identified middle class and working class types of parenting. Her ethnographic work conducted with families in Philadelphia during the 1990s entailed that middle class parenting (concerted cultivation) and working class parenting (natural growth) not only reflected, but also reproduced class differences between families. Here, I will examine what other factors are at play in shaping practices of upbringing and how they intersect with each other in these specific families.

Conclusion: Continuity, Change and Intergenerational Difference

The book has presented findings from interviews with South Asian Muslim parents and their teenage children, together with results from a questionnaire conducted in three secondary schools in London and one college in the North West of England. The aim was to shed light on two related questions: how is it to grow up as a South Asian British Muslim today and what are the experiences of South Asian Muslim parents bringing up their children in Britain? These questions do not exist in a void, but rather they are set in the wider social context that, particularly since 9/11 (but also since the London bombings, Madrid, Charlie Hebdo, and the Paris attacks in November 2015) and the advent of ISIS (Islamic State), has affected the perceptions and identity of Muslims around the world.

Love Relationships and Marriage: Agency, Islam and Culture

Romantic relationships are defining features of the teenage years (Connolly and McIsaac 2011) and they involve mutual voluntary interactions with expression of affection and, at times, but not always, sexual intercourse (Collins 2003). These early experiences are often volatile and short-lived (Furman and Shaffer 2003) and focus on present companionships and sexual experimentation rather than on the stronger levels of commitment that are more typical of the years ahead (Arnett 2000). Psychologists have argued that teenagers’ love relationships have important developmental value with implications for future attachment and identity (Furman and Shaffer 2003). However, the meaning of love and the way love affects the lived intimacy of individuals is contextual. Nowadays, ideologies of love as prevalence of emotions over the rational, natural attraction but also choice and individuality are highly diffused (Giddens 1992). Twamley’s (2013a, b, 2014) analysis of Gujarati Indians in the UK and India suggests that global ideologies are subject to reinterpretations and are influenced by local understandings. Hence, general trends, perceptions of ideas romantic relationships come together with cultural specific experiences. Since love relationships have to do with private lives, most of the available research on the topic comes from psychological perspectives, which do not always address differences by ethnicity, gender or class. Some research from the USA highlights that certain ethnic groups, such as Asian Americans, have more authoritarian parents, and are less likely to report to having a partner during adolescence because of cultural preferences toward later-in-life romantic experiences, which are perceived as having to lead to marriage (Connolly and McIsaac 2011).

Constructing a British Muslim Identity

In this extract, Zahida’s father, Sameer, makes an important point about boundaries of identity. The construction of an identity involves reflections on how different aspects of the self come together and adjust to the other while crossing multiple boundaries. In this chapter, I explore the construction and meanings of two aspects of identity that are particularly relevant for this book: being British and being Muslim. The focus is on how young people and parents make sense of their identities as well as how identities are influenced by external social conditions. The idea is to provide context to the concept of identity beyond the notions of faith, religiosity, nationality, citizenship or country of birth, as driven by parents’ and young people’s own interpretations. Hence, here I focused on how young people and parents perceived their identity, while in the next chapter I will detail the mechanisms and processes of adjustment and negotiations between different aspects of identity.