Diaspora Youth and Ancestral Homeland: British Pakistani/Kashmiri Youth Visiting Kin in Pakistan and Kashmir * BY GILL CRESSEY

Abstract

Can one be British and Muslim? What does it mean to be a Muslim in a secular society? What are the limits and possibilities of multiculturalism, as practised in the UK? Such questions are at the forefront of current research and policy debate, for instance in work by Tahir Abbas as well as by Tariq Modood on multicultural politics, since 2001, following riots involving Muslim and white youth in the north of England, the terrorist attacks on the USA and the London bombings in the summer of 2005. Against such a backdrop, a study that looks at identity construction among Pakistani and Kashmiri-origin young people in Britain promises to be of considerable interest to both academic and policy debate. Gill Cressey's book is based on doctoral research conducted in the former Cultural Studies and Sociology department at the University of Birmingham, England. The book takes a cultural studies approach and relies on discourse analysis as its main analytical tool. The author recorded and transcribed narrative interviews with 30 young people, aged between 14 and 25, of Pakistani or Kashmiri parentage living in Birmingham, who had visited Pakistan or Azad (Free, or Pakistan-held) Kashmir within the previous four years. She also asked some of the research participants to tell stories of their visits to Pakistan in front of a video camera. The material was analysed thematically with the use of qualitative software and is presented across nine substantive chapters. Collections of interview extracts from different individuals are presented to illustrate young people's views on themes ranging from travel to the ‘homeland’ (the ancestral homeland of Pakistan or Kashmir) to young people's sense of their ethnic and religious identity (of belonging in and to Britain, of being Muslim in the West and being Muslim in the sense of belonging to a global Muslim community). There are also chapters on gender, kinship relationships, inter-generational issues and cultural change, including language-use.