South Asian Muslim Women and the Politics of Migration, Gender, Class, and Religion

• In Event: 292 - Regular Session. Religion and Intersecting Identities

Abstract

In this ethnographic study, I explore how participation in two types of religious groups - mosque-based and home-based - structures the material lived experiences of immigrant Bangladeshi women in terms of their immigrant experiences and gendered relationships within the families. I deploy "multiple intersections" approach to find that women's participation in the two forms of religious groups is filtered through their class identities such that their religious participation is largely mediated by how they perceive their own class positions. Further, I find that the women in my study perform gendered religiosity often to gain agency and expand the horizon of their social support networks within the male-centric familial and communal arrangements. However, the mosque-based group provides its members with more advantages in terms of mitigating the powers of gendered relationships and male-dominance than the home-based group.

Author

• Pallavi Banerjee, University of Calgary